The "Northern Alliance": The Most Murderous Violators of Human Rights!

The medieval Taliban have been shredded to pieces in a few days of bombing by United States forces who until a couple of years ago were "engaged" with them". This ignominious end is despite all the Taliban's nauseating lying and bragging, and the bombastic fatwas of Mullah Omar and Osama to carry on their jihad to the very end. This is the result of the sheer disgust and revulsion the Taliban were so successful in garnering from inside Afghanistan and around the world. The Taliban, like their loathsome Golboddini brethren of the Hezb-e-Islami before them, saw so convenient -at the end of their shameful careers- to shave off beards and whiskers, throw away their turbans, drop their baggy pants, and scatter away like mice for dear life. This is the ultimate fate of all executioners in history who tyrannise a people under the guise of religion, traditions and ethnicity.

Some people in Kabul and elsewhere opine that instead of killing Mullah Omar and Mr Osama bin Laden, it would be much worthier and befitting to house them in specially made cages until they wither away, and put them up for exhibition around the world as an example to all Islamic and non-Islamic fundamentalists who nurture fond dreams of building and running religio-fascist prison-regimes for entire peoples.

The ignominious pulverisation of the illiterate and ignorant Taliban should, first and foremost, be an indelible brand of shame on the foreheads of their ideologues, of the kind of Messrs. Isshaq Negargar, Dr. Khalilullah Hashimian, Nabi Mesdaq et al., who wrote, bawled and howled -to the utmost of their capabilities- in defence of the Taliban and what they stood for. If these panegyrists and polished agents of the Taliban lack the sense of honour to commit suicide or to forego residence in the "infidel and decadent" West, they should at least have the decency to give themselves up to the counter-terrorism organisations of the United States and Britain in order to spell out how and at what level they were associated with the perpetrators of the September 11 infamy. In fact, if the western anti-terrorism coalition partners had been serious in their anti-fundamentalist struggle, they should by now have gathered all these big and small "brains" and masterminds of the Taliban and the al-Qaeda from their sties in different western countries, put them on a plane and despatched them to the hideouts of Mullah Omar and Osama to give comfort and guidance to their local, Arab and Pakistani heroes in the moment of truth of their "jihad against the infidels"!

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan this year fervently hoped to be able to celebrate International Human Rights Day inside Afghanistan. But the re-emergence of the "Northern Alliance" criminals in different parts of our country, dangling as they are from American bayonets, crushed all such hopes. The "Northern Alliance" need to remember the years 1992 to 1996 when they were in power; when the execrable Golbodin Hekmatyar gang (Hezb-i-Islami) turned Kabul to rubble with their daily indiscriminate bombardment and rocketing; when the infamous Mazari-Khalili gang (Wahdat-i-Islami) were gouging out the eyes of non-Hazaras; when the vile Sayyaf gang (Ittehad-i-Islami) were driving 6-inch nails into the heads of Hazaras and broiling them alive in metal containers; when the perfidious Rabbani-Massoud gangs (Jamiat-i-Islami and Shorai Nazar) slaughtered the inhabitants of Afshar and other residential areas in Kabul and whitewashed the faces of all murderers, rapists and looters in history in terms of the barbarity and infamy they perpetrated against countless innocent and defenceless women, girls and young boys. The "Northern Alliance" should know that the bleeding wounds they have inflicted upon the people of Afghanistan during all the years of their jihadi rule of gore and infamy are too open, too painful, to allow any posturing of democratic baptism and conversion to belief in human rights on their part to be taken as anything but an added insult to the people who have suffered so much at their hands. Such posturing and talk of "democracy" and "women's rights" cannot wash away or hide their innate fundamentalist-terrorist nature.

Watching the suave, polished, appearance of certain jihadi leaders on TV, a still-mourning mother, shrivelled from years of suffering and agony, commented: 'I see the blood of my sons on the immaculate suits and ties of these "Northern Alliance" leaders.' Such is the gut reaction of the overwhelming majority of our grieving people.

The people of the world need to know the "Northern Alliance" criminals. These are the very people who declared democracy and elections to be blasphemous, heretical concepts. These are the very people who immediately, upon usurping power after the bursting of the bubble of the puppet Najib regime, and prior to any vitally pressing action in regard to the restoration of peace and well-being of the scourged people of Afghanistan, targeted their pious wrath against women and in a joint declaration of all allied jihadi parties proclaimed -amongst other sordid restrictions- the compulsory veiling of all women. The people of the world need to know that long before the Taliban, it was Mr. Mullah Younis Khalis (a confederate of the victorious jihadis) who "executed" the Buddha statutes at Bamiyan by firing volleys of artillery against it. The people of the world need to know that in terms of widespread raping of girls and women from ages seven to seventy, the track record of the Taliban can in no way stand up against that of these very same "Northern Alliance" associates. The people of the world need to know that with their track record of numerous massacres, looting national assets and archaeological riches, extorting vast amounts of money from defenceless people and perpetrating other crimes and atrocities too numerous to list here, the leaders of the "Northern Alliance" only deserve to sit in the dock in international tribunals beside other war criminals, and not at the helm of a government for Afghanistan.

Due to the presence of incorrigible fundamentalists at the talks in Bonn -especially the arch-criminal Homayoun Jarir, whose master Golbodin recently shifted his allegiance to the Taliban- RAWA from the outset regarded the Bonn gathering with mistrust. The composition of the interim government which includes jihadi vampires and two women, one of them a leader of the mercenary criminal Hezb-i-Wahdat party and the other a known Parchami traitor, has proven that very unfortunately the United Nations has failed in aiding our people get rid of the rancid remains of the "Northern Alliance" hellhounds. The United Nations needs to know that even if all the cabinet posts of a government for Afghanistan were to be filled with such women, they can never be regarded as emblems of freedom and deliverance from oppression for Afghan women.

Jihadi leaders in yesteryears solemnly pledged their "honour", swore on the Koran in the heart of their holiest of holies -Mecca and Madina- in the presence of their Pakistani, Iranian and Arab masters to desist from bloodshed (and, of course, broke their pledge before the ink was dry). Do the United Nations think that those who are capable of such perfidy would honour their signatures on a piece of paper signed in Bonn? Do the United Nations not understand that these sold-out warlords will have no scruples in once again putting themselves up for sale at a cheap price to old and new proxy-seeking powers, and consequently will once again invite the interference of their foreign masters if their sordid parochial and personal ambitions and interests are fundamentally compromised? These parvenu felons have an unquenchable thirst for power and status, irrespective of the price; and it is for this reason that they cannot but conspire against each other and slit each other's throats. Do the United Nations not understand that members of the "Northern Alliance" -who not once but tens of times looted convoys of United Nations aid goods, and none other than Mahmoud Mistry, the then representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in Afghanistan, truthfully called them "bands of bandits"- can never be trusted to handle billions of dollars to be given to Afghanistan for reconstruction and rehabilitation?

RAWA once again serves warning to the United Nations and the world community that any delay in despatching UN peace keeping forces to Afghanistan will in effect be leaving the way open for inevitable bloodbaths and repetition of the unparalleled horrors and atrocities of the 1992-96 years. The current dog-fighting between Dostum and Hezb-i-Wahdat gangs will not remain restricted to Mazar-i-Sharif. If the United Nations is sincerely concerned in regard to the independence, unity and democratisation of Afghanistan it must under no name or pretext continue its support to the "Northern Alliance" and swiftly and unequivocally condemn and punish any country which tries to supply funds and arms to these murderers. It will only be then that a government devoid of terrorist-fundamentalist contamination and based on democratic values can be set up in Afghanistan, succeed in restoring peace and stability to this blighted land and address the challenge of its rehabilitation in earnest.

The mere end of the forced misery and humiliation of the burqa is in no way an indication of attainment of women's rights and liberties. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, as the only feminist anti-fundamentalist organisation in Afghanistan, believes that only with the establishment of a secular and democratic government in Afghanistan will Afghan women be able to unburden the deadweight of centuries of oppression and stand their full stature on a par with men.

Our devastated motherland, draped in unending mourning, escaped the talons of Taliban criminality only to find itself in the dead-end of jihadi murderers; a "dead-end" which eludes description and definition, except perhaps in the potent and glorious words of Ahmad Shamlu. But RAWA, together with the Afghan people who bore it, will never desist from struggling to break out of this "dead-end":

In This Deadend

They smell your breath.
You better not have said, "I love you."
They smell your heart.
These are strange times, darling...
And they flog
love
at the roadblock.
We had better hide love in the closet...
In this crooked dead end and twisting chill,
they feed the fire
with the kindling of song and poetry.
Do not risk a thought.
These are strange times, darling...
He who knocks on the door at midnight
has come to kill the light.
We had better hide light in the closet...
Those there are butchers
stationed at the crossroads
with bloody clubs and cleavers.
These are strange times, darling...
And they excise smiles from lips
and songs from mouths.
We had better hide joy in the closet...
Canaries barbecued
on a fire of lilies and jasmine,
these are strange times, darling...
Satan drunk with victory
sits at our funeral feast.
We had better hide God in the closet.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
December 10, 2001