Last night at the height of the evening rush hour, officers of Stop the War Coalition, attempted to deliver a letter of protest to Downing St about the war in Afghanistan calling for the withdrawal of UK troops. The gates to Downing St remained barred however, and the authorities refused to accept the letter. Earlier, together with members of Green Left and with the London Green Party banner, we had been positioned on the pavement opposite Downing St protesting against the war. The police had obviously decided, in view of recent events in London, and the sensitivity of the issue, to be very lighthanded with this demonstration. There was a surreal moment when an old fashioned type 'friendly' sergeant came over to speak to us and asked one of us if "you have any friends or relations over in Afghanistan", obviously under the impression that we were from military families or something. General police behaviour there gave me the impression that there was some sympathy for the demo and this bears out the findings of many recent opinion polls and articles in the popular press.
Hundreds of us then crossed the road and protested loudly outside the gates of Downing St. The police merely 'requested' us to move back across the road but then gave up. Lindsey German, Convenor of Stop the War, gave a speech about the war and confirmed that she would be appearing that night on Newsnight, together with several military types (one of whom turned out to be a Tory MP) debating the war. Indeed, the whole programme was given over to the war in Afghanistan and included an interview with the Armed Forces Minister, who was floundering all over the place. I spotted Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn at Downing St, and we were joined at one point by a rather strange man kitted out in a full traditional Irish dancing costume, who proceeded to do a dance for peace to the accompaniment of Irish celil music. The demonstration lasted two hours and a number of Arabic and Iranian TV stations were interviewing various people. I spoke briefly to the Arabic correspondent of one of the Iranian ones. Many commentators and experts on the region have predicted that this war will be another Vietnam and will suck masive resources both militarily and financially into Afghanistan for years to come with no end in sight.
Last night's Newsnight also included the ever sensible Rory Stewart, the Director of the Carr Center on Human Rights Policy at Harvard, who lives in Kabul. Stewart pointed out to the military heads that the whole mission was flawed and that the type of democratic government which they were professing they wanted, would take decades to develop in Afghanistan. The military types had to admit that the military mission was being followed and that they, as officers etc, were "following orders" but did not quite understand the political point of the war.
In a recent article entitled "The Irresistible Illusion" (July 9) in the London Review of Books, Stewart criticises the current US and NATO plan for Afghanistan. Obama has so far committed to building an Afghan army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000. McCrystal (the US Commander in Afghanistan) now appears to be pushing for what some US generals have earlier spoken about wanting: a combined Afghan army-police-security apparatus of 450,000 soldiers. Such a force would cost $2 or $ 3 billion a year to maintain; as Rory Stewart points out, the annual revenue of the Afghan government is just $600 million. "We criticize developing countries for spending 30 percent of their budget on defense," Stewart notes, and "we are encouraging Afghanistan to spend 500 percent of its budget."
The criticism of the war mounts as the bodies return home, but what of the thousands of Afghans being killed daily in this conflict? As Lindsey German pointed out last night, there is no mention of them in the news reports. No doubt the arms manufacturing industry is pleased. Digby Jones gave the game away on a recent 'Politics Den' session on Newsnight when he rejected someone's scheme for defence cuts on the grounds that it would seriously impact on the UK's arms manufacturing industry. The true voice of Moloch as the bodies are fed into the mincer!
I have recently been approached by some German Greens in Munster, where many British troops are stationed, to support a German and Pan European 'Friedens Initiative' (Peace Initiative) and to call on the German government to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. Germany faces a general election this autumn and the issue could be important, especially if the summer NATO 'push' grounds to a halt. Their website is here http://www.gruene-friedensinitiative.de/
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