Filmmaker and Writer, Tariq Ali, on Afghanistan

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Fast exit urged from Afghanistan
Thursday, November 19, 2009
By DIANE LEDERMAN
dlederman@repub.com

AMHERST - While President Barack Obama continues to deliberate his strategy for Afghanistan, the answer for British-Pakistani writer, journalist, and filmmaker Tariq Ali is clear - prepare an exit strategy and execute it.

Ali spoke before several hundred people, including students, faculty and the community at the 12th Annual Eqbal Ahmad Lecture in the Robert Crown Center at Hampshire College Tuesday. That lecture, which honors the teaching, scholarship, and activism of the late Hampshire College professor Eqbal Ahmad, has drawn such speakers as former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, journalist Seymour Hersh and novelist Arundhati Roy. Ali's talk was titled "Obama's Afghan-Pak Syndrome."

Ali has written more than 20 books on history, politics and fiction, and is a regular contributor to The Guardian, New Left Review, and the London Review of Books. He believes that if "a wrong decision is made (in Afghanistan), the suffering will be (enormous) for both the Afghanis and the United States."  Advertisement








While most people in this country aren't touched by the war since there's no draft, the number of former soldiers committing suicide is "going up and up."

Ali said Afghanistan is becoming increasingly destabilized. Being at war starting in 1979 with the Soviet invasion "creates trauma , massive death and destruction. It destroys the fabric of society." And, he said, "What are the arguments for the war? it is very difficult to find them."

He said there were several reasons given when the U.S. invaded in 2001, hunting for Osama bin Laden, who still has not been found. Another was the talk of liberating the women in Afghanistan - a first for "an imperial army to wage war to defend women," he said. But that justification also is unjustified, he said. The conditions for women "have deteriorated" with an increasing number of rapes and increasing number of women having to turn to prostitution to survive, he said.

He said the argument against the United States pulling out is "it will become a mess. But it is a mess. The longer western troops stay in the region, the more of a mess it will become."

For him, the only possible hope for the country is for neighboring countries such as Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia to help sustain and rebuild. What is required "is a regional solution which would be much better than what is going on today," he said. And, he said, "China, they've got the cash to rebuild the country."

If the United States wants to send troops, he said, it would require up to 250,000 troops. But that will also mean 750,000 deaths.

Ali said war is also spilling over into Pakistan and further destabilizing that country. He talked about Graham E. Fuller, the former CIA station chief in Kabul and a former vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council and his assessment that the presence of the United States "is part of the problem, not the solution."

No country likes to be occupied, Ali said. "It doesn't work. It's not going to work this time."

Ali spoke for about an hour before answering questions. He said that people concerned about the war "have to assert your democratic rights as citizens. Otherwise nothing happens." And while Obama spun an aura of hope last November about changes, the election showed "that casting a ballot is not enough."