Germany: Trial of neo-Nazi terror group whitewashes role of intelligence services

Dietmar Henning

After more than four years of proceedings, the German federal prosecutor’s office ended its summation on Tuesday and demanded a lifelong sentence and subsequent preventive detention for Beate Zschäpe. Zschäpe is the surviving member of the trio of neo-Nazi terrorists known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU). The federal prosecutor, Herbert Diemer, also called for long prison sentences for other defendants on trial in Munich.

Over the course of seven days, the prosecution laid out in detail the case against the accused. Excluded from the trial and from prosecution from the very beginning were state agencies, in particular the German domestic intelligence agency, the Office for Constitutional Protection, which is heavily implicated in the crimes of the NSU.

As a member of the NSU, Zschäpe was involved in 10 murders and over 30 attempted murders, three bomb attacks, and 15 robberies. The state prosecutor claimed she bore especial guilt, even though she may never have shot any of the victims herself. If the court follows the recommendation of the prosecution, Zschäpe will spend the rest of her life in prison.

Diemer also demanded long prison sentences for four other defendants. He requested 12 years’ imprisonment for the former neo-fascist NPD (German National Democratic Party) functionary Ralf Wohlleben, as an accessory to murder in nine cases. Wohlleben had, amongst other services to the NSU, supplied the “Ceska” pistol used by the group to murder nine immigrants.

André Eminger is to be sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment. He was found guilty of being an accessory to attempted murder. Eminger rented the camper used by NSU members Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos in June 2004 to drive to Cologne, where they planted a bomb in the city’s Keupstraße. The court followed the request of the federal prosecutor to detain Eminger in court. Until now he had remained free.

Holger Gerlach helped Zschäpe and her companions, Mundlos and Böhnhardt, to live undetected by providing them with identity papers. Gerlach has been charged with supporting a terrorist organization and the prosecutor has demanded he serve a five-year prison sentence.

The prosecutor also requested a youth penalty of three years for Carsten S., who procured the weapon on behalf of Wohlleben. The prosecutor adjudged that S. deserved a mitigated sentence after making a full confession.

The role of the domestic intelligence agency was never considered by the court. Diemer had already given the intelligence services a clean bill of health at the start of the trial. Its agents had made a decisive contribution to the investigation, Diemer claimed. There were no persons pulling the strings to be uncovered. Any other interpretations were “senseless rumours” and a “will-o’-the-wisp.”

As the WSWS wrote at the start of the trial, the entire NSU proceedings were structured to cover up the involvement of the state in the crimes of the NSU. At an early stage the prosecutor’s office concluded that the NSU consisted of just three people, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, who died under mysterious circumstances before their arrest, and Beate Zschäpe. Any investigation into other NSU members was thereby excluded from the start.

Several parliamentary investigation committees have concluded that the NSU must have consisted of more than three members. Members of the neo-Nazi organization “Blood and Honour,” which has since been banned, supported the trio when they went underground. They collected money for the gang at neo-Nazi concerts and applauded their crimes in their publications.

Lawyers, who represent the relatives of victims in the case, have repeatedly maintained that the NSU must have consisted of a larger group of neo-Nazis.

Lawyer Stephan Kuhn, who represents a victim of the bomb attack in the Cologne Keupstraße, told Spiegel Online earlier this week that explosives and 20 various firearms had been found in the last apartment to be occupied by Mundlos, Böhnhardt and Zschäpe. The origins of 17 of these weapons had not been ascertained. “This is a clear indicator of other supporters that the prosecutor has not investigated.” There are also further indications that others around the NSU had not been identified.

Lawyers for the victims have repeatedly raised these claims in court together with evidence pointing to the involvement of state agencies. For their part, intelligence officers and their undercover agents who were summoned as witnesses refused to provide statements, declared they could not remember, or simply lied.

It is now known that about 40 undercover agents and informers were in contact with the three NSU terrorists. The neo-Nazi group Thuringian Homeland Security, in which the trio initially became radicalised, was the creation of undercover agent Tino Brandt, who built up the organisation with money provided by the secret service. After the trio went “underground” in 1998, they were covered up by the secret services for the following 13 years.

The exact extent of the collaboration between the secret services and NSU remains unclear. It is documented that the Hessian secret service agent Andreas Temme was actually at the scene of the murder of one of the victims, Halit Yozgat, in Kassel in 2006. Temme has alleged absurdly he knew nothing of the murder and has been backed by his superior officers. Other agents have received similar cover from higher-ups.

The Thuringian investigative committee notes in its final report that the search for the NSU terrorists was so amateurish as to lead to the “suspicion of deliberate sabotage.”

In his interview with Spiegel Online, Kuhn also reported that the prosecutor’s office had suppressed evidence that could have demonstrated collusion between the intelligence agencies and the NSU. According to Kuhn, the prosecutor’s office “structured the investigations in such a way that it could decide which results of the investigation should be submitted to the court and which should not.”

There were a total of nine other investigations against potential supporters, which were to be pursued separately, plus a broader investigation (structural procedure) of unknown supporters, in particular suppliers of weapons. In these proceedings, the lawyers of the sub-defendants would not have the right to inspect files.

“If the prosecutor’s office did not wish the parties to the proceedings to be aware of an interrogation, he ensured that the interrogation of the witness took place in the structural procedure. This provided the legal leeway to prevent the presentation of an interrogation in court,” Kuhn said.

The prosecutor also requested on a number of occasions that the court reject applications by the lawyers of the civil case claimants for the interrogation of witnesses. Kuhn said, “The federal prosecutor’s office thus used its position in a manner that indicated it feared certain investigations could reach the public domain.”

As one example, he cited the application by a subsidiary lawyer to invite to the stand a former official of the secret service, with the cover name Lothar Lingen. Lingen had admitted to the federal prosecutor’s office he had intentionally destroyed files related to the NSU to prevent their content being revealed. “He said that based on the number of undercover agents in Thuringia nobody would have believed that the federal constitutional protection did not know about the NSU.” The prosecutor’s office claimed in the trial, against its better knowledge, that this was speculation and that Lingen would not be recalled as a witness.

It is evident that, despite the attention to detail in the case of the five accused, the aim of the NSU trial was to conceal the role played by secret services. This has taken place as more information emerges about the activities of the far-right in the security agencies and German army (Bundeswehr).

The German army officer Franco A., who had registered as a Syrian refugee and planned the assassination of politicians, received cover from superiors and was part of a larger network involving the far-right Identity movement. A. also had connections to a terror cell in Rostock, which planned political assassinations. The cell included a policeman and a lawyer.

Last week, the federal administrative court in Leipzig ended its long-standing trial of Joachim Freiherr von Sinner, the former head of the foreign secret service BND in the city of Mainz. Von Sinner had taken down two photographs of Christian Wulff, then the German president, because he opposed Wulff’s statement that Islam belonged to Germany. The court decided against any punishment for von Sinner based on his right-wing extremist views on politicians and Islamism. “Here the threshold for punishment has not yet been exceeded,” declared judge Ulf Domgörgen.

According to the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, von Sinner had planned “exercises of a paramilitary nature” with fellow thinkers from the police, the Bundeswehr and the BND. The aim of such exercises was to make the “resistance” against Muslims as effective as possible. All proceedings against von Sinner have been terminated.

German conservative newspaper threatens Poland with territorial demands

Peter Schwarz

The Polish government is demanding reparations from Germany for the war crimes committed during the Second World War. The demand is not new, but has never before been raised so persistently.

The chairman of the governing right-wing nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS), Jaroslav Kaczynski, breathed new life into the reparations debate in late June. Ever since, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo has issued repeated demands on the issue. She told the RNFFM radio station on September 7, “Poland has a right to reparations, and the Polish state has the right to demand them.” Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski stated that Poland’s demand amounted to €840 billion.

The Bureau of Research of the Polish parliament published a 40-page report on Monday justifying the Polish demand. According to this, an official 1953 statement in which the Polish government relinquished its right to claim reparations from Germany is not legally valid because it was made under pressure from the Soviet Union and only applied to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), not Germany.

The German government has emphatically rejected the Polish demand. Government spokesman Stefan Seibert declared last Friday that in 1953, Poland relinquished its claim to further reparations “legally and with applicability to Germany as a whole,” and subsequently confirmed this on numerous occasions. “From our point of view, this question is therefore fully settled, legally and politically.”

Threats from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Comments in the German media have also rejected the Polish demand. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), and its Sunday edition, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, have adopted a particularly aggressive tone.

One FAZ comment noted that the German government must resist Warsaw’s demands. “If they do not do so, they will leave the door wide open to similar demands from other countries—Poland was certainly not the only victim of Nazi aggression.” A video comment by the FAZ was titled “Tough luck for Poland.”

An article in the September 10 edition of the FAZ, headlined “Dangerous discussion,” by historian Gregor Schöllgen went even further. He threatened Warsaw with a refusal to recognise Poland’s western border should it continue to insist on its reparations demand. “Whoever makes an issue out of the demand for reparations is also making an issue out of Poland’s western border,” he wrote.

Schöllgen did not call into question the horrific crimes perpetrated by the Nazi regime in Poland. “Hardly any other country suffered more under the German war of annihilation, conquest and plunder than Poland,” he wrote. “More than five-and-a-half million Poles did not survive it and the subsequent occupation.”

But he claimed that Poland’s demand for compensation was settled when the Polish border was moved westward. “With the possession of formerly German territories, a large proportion of the compensation claim made by the Polish People’s Republic against Germany was covered,” he added.

The Soviet Union and Poland’s formal relinquishing of reparation payments in 1953 took account of the fact “that with the separation of German eastern territories, including all immovable and movable property, gave enormous wealth to Poland,” stated Schöllgen.

This interpretation of history leads him to threaten that a demand will be made for the return of the German territories ceded to Poland after World War II. Since the Federal Republic recognised the Oder-Neiße line in 1970 as part of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik as Poland’s western border, only neo-Nazis, associations of expelled peoples and right-wing elements in the CDU/CSU have demanded the return of the “lost eastern territories.”

Schöllgen makes use of extremely aggressive language. “Anyone raising the demand today for Polish reparations from Germany must know that they could be playing with fire,” he wrote, and referred to a statement by German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel (Free Democrats), in 1972. “As part of such a discussion, one can never avoid the fact that former German territories were seized. One would then have to take account of personal damages [a reference to those killed while fleeing Poland] and material losses that have arisen,” Scheel said.

“Whoever makes an issue of Poland’s western border inevitably also makes an issue of Poland’s eastern border,” continued Schöllgen. “And anyone making an issue of Poland’s eastern border inevitably raises the issue of Poland’s relationship to Ukraine and Belarus.”

This is a barely concealed attempt to incite demands among Poland’s eastern neighbours for demands of Polish territory. Poland was forced after the war to give up parts of its former territory to the Soviet Union, which today belong to Belarus and Ukraine.

Legally justified

From a legal standpoint, the Polish demand is not unjustified. Peter Loev, deputy director of the German-Polish Institute, stated to Focus magazine, “In purely legal terms, Poland certainly has grounds to demand reparations.”

Poland’s relinquishing of the right to claim reparations in 1953, which came about at Moscow’s initiative, did in fact apply in practice to the GDR, since Poland never had an opportunity to claim reparations from the Federal Republic after its separation in 1949. The relinquishing of reparations was Moscow’s response to the workers’ uprising of June 17, 1953 in the GDR. The Kremlin regime, weakened after Stalin’s death, sought in this way to lessen the economic crisis in the GDR because it feared the uprising could spread throughout Poland and to the Soviet Union itself.

The 1953 relinquishing—in addition to all agreements reached between West Germany and Eastern European states prior to 1990—contained the proviso that only a peace treaty would finally clarify the question of reparations. This is how the German government interprets the Two-plus-four agreement which sealed German reunification and fully re-established German sovereignty. In this agreement, Germany once again explicitly recognised the inviolability of the Oder-Neiße border.

However, Poland was not party to the agreement. The use of the term “peace treaty” was deliberately avoided at the time so as not to unleash another reparations debate. Despite this, the German government now claims that Poland relinquished all future claims to reparations because they did not make the claim at the time.

Germany enjoyed a substantial financial benefit thanks to the unsettled issue of reparations. The Federal Republic has paid a mere €73.4 billion since 1945 in compensation payments globally, according to Schöllgen’s calculations, including payments to Israel and Jewish organisations, surviving victims in Eastern Europe, forced labourers, and anyone else he could find. Poland received only a small percentage of this.

A reactionary demand

But even though Poland’s demand for reparations has a legal basis, it is politically reactionary. The PiS government is not concerned with compensating the victims of the Nazi regime. Warsaw is not demanding any compensation for victims who are still alive, who have a miserable existence under their rule, but rather transfers into Polish state coffers. But PiS is using the reparations demand above all to incite right-wing nationalist ideas.

PiS emerged from those elements in the leadership of the Solidarnosc movement who misdirected the uprising of Polish workers into the dead end of the Catholic clergy, Polish nationalism and capitalist restoration.

The restoration of capitalism had catastrophic consequences for the Polish working class. The shipyards and factories, where Solidarnosc enjoyed a mass base, have largely been shuttered. The country wound up serving the major corporations as a cheap labour location. More than 3 million Poles have left the country and work for low wages abroad. A quarter century after capitalist restoration, poverty rates are horrendous.

Incapable of mitigating the social crisis, PiS is mobilising petty bourgeois and impoverished sections of the population in backward rural areas, and developing dictatorial forms of rule to suppress all forms of opposition, which is widespread. According to a recent poll, 82 percent of those aged 19-29 and 52 percent of all voters described themselves as opponents of the government. Only a minority of them said they back the bourgeois opposition, which advocates a programme of economic liberalism and defends the European Union.

PiS’s model is Marshall Pilsudski, who ruled Poland as a dictator from 1926 to 1935. Leon Trotsky described the Pilsudski regime at the time as “an antiparliamentary and, above all, anti-proletarian counterrevolution, with whose help the declining bourgeoisie attempts—and not without success, at least for a time—to protect and preserve its fundamental positions.” Like Mussolini in Italy, Pilsudski mobilised petty-bourgeois forces to intimidate the working class.

The PiS government is also coming under increased pressure on the foreign policy front. To date, the European Commission has initiated legal proceedings against Poland for violating EU treaties due to the lack of judicial independence. Hysterically anti-Russian like Pilsudski, the PiS government relies heavily on the US and lives in constant fear of the US abandoning it, or of Germany forming an alliance with Moscow at Warsaw’s expense. PiS is responding to this mounting foreign policy pressure with the demand for reparations.

Growing war danger

State demands for reparations are generally not an effective method to make good past wrongs. They do not combat the roots of fascism and war, but rather reproduce them. They are a source of persistent conflict, intensify international tensions, and create the ideal breeding ground for chauvinist propaganda. They poison the political climate and set an international precedent that could trigger a flood of further demands. A cautionary example in this regard is the Versailles Treaty of 1919, which compelled Germany to pay crippling war reparations and contributed significantly to the rise of the Nazis and the Second World War.

The fact that 72 years after the end of World War II, Berlin and Washington are seeking to outdo each other with demands and threats shows how tense and poisonous the political climate in Europe has become. The tensions and conflicts that transformed Europe into a battlefield are once again breaking out.

Berlin, which likes to point the finger at the reactionary regime in Warsaw, is no less reactionary. In striving to subordinate Europe to its interests, Berlin is displaying growing arrogance. As we have explained in earlier articles on this subject, Germany cannot return to the pursuit of great power policies and militarism without resurrecting all of the reactionary ideological ballast from the past. It is a sign of how far the media and academic establishment has shifted to the right that a respected contemporary historian is calling Poland’s western border into question in the FAZ.

The FAZ and its Sunday edition have long played a leading role in this process. In the historians’ dispute of the 1980s, they served as a platform for Ernst Nolte, the most well-known Nazi apologist among German post-war historians. In recent times, they have defended the right-wing extremist professor of history Jörg Baberowski, who supports Nolte and described Hitler as being “not vicious.” They have published several hysterical attacks on the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei and its youth organisation, the IYSSE, because they politically exposed Baberowski and attacked him publicly.

We wrote in an article two years ago on the issue of Greek demands for reparations from Germany: “The compensation for past injustice—like the fight against the austerity dictates of the troika and the struggle against war and fascism—is inseparably bound up with a socialist perspective. It demands the unification of the European working class on the basis of a revolutionary program, with the goal of abolishing the European Union, establishing workers’ governments, turning the large corporations and banks into public institutions, and reorganizing society within the framework of the United Socialist States of Europe.”

Truckers announce strike against attack on Labour Code in France

Kumaran Ira

After a one-day protest strike Tuesday against French President Emmanuel Macron’s decrees aiming to destroy the Labour Code, truckers have announced that they will take strike action. However, the government has announced that it will not back down on the labour decrees that it has negotiated with the trade unions and business groups. It is insisting that the decrees will go into effect at the end of September.

The decrees aim to increase French companies’ global competitiveness by giving them more flexibility to hire and fire, tear up and rewrite contracts, cut wages, and attack social benefits.

On Wednesday, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and Workers Force (FO) unions called for extendable strike action starting on September 25 to demand the retraction of the decrees. The transport federations of the French Democratic Labour Confederation (CFDT) and the French Christian Workers Confederation (CFTC), who refused to join the CGT protest strike on Tuesday, called a strike for September 18.

Jérôme Vérité, the general secretary of the CGT transport federation, declared, that “of course,” fuel depots in France would be a target. “This will be a strike that will have very concrete impacts on the French economy,” he said. Patrice Clos of FO said there would be “strong and powerful actions.”

In a communiqué, the CFDT asked workers to “make their anger known” against the “social typhoon” that the decrees will cause in the transport industry.

The government is promising, however, not to give an inch on the decrees and is insisting that demonstrations “are not supposed” to modify the content of the decrees. After the first day of action on Tuesday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe warned that strike action would have no impact on the policy his government would adopt.

He said, “I respect opposition, it exists, it is there, I am listening to it.” However, he stressed that he had no intention of giving in to opposition to his unpopular measures, asking, “Where will democracy be if the parliamentary majority is systematically put in question?”

In fact, it is the government that is trying to trample democracy underfoot. After record abstention in the second round of the legislative elections, Macron’s parliamentary majority was in fact elected by a minority of France’s registered voters. Now that Macron is trying to destroy the social rights of the working class, 68 percent of the French population oppose his decrees, and 55 percent of the population supports strikes against this policy, whereas Macron’s approval ratings have collapsed down to only 30 percent.

Philippe’s intransigence underscores that workers cannot obtain a victory in this struggle under the leadership of the trade union bureaucracies. They have negotiated the labour law with Macron and will not carry out any serious struggle against it. The unions and their petty-bourgeois political allies, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of Unsubmissive France (LFT) and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), are hostile to the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class that is the only way to stop the austerity offensive of Macron and the European Union (EU).

Now, Macron intends if needed to use all the repressive powers granted to him by France’s reactionary state of emergency against the workers, to ram through his decrees.

The political lessons of previous strike struggles against government austerity measures must be drawn. Even when truckers and refinery workers mobilised in powerful strikes in 2010 and 2016, the trade unions isolated them, and the conservative and Socialist Party (PS) government sent riot police to requisition the workers and break the strike.

In 2016, after four years during which they mounted no opposition to PS President François Hollande’s attacks on the working class, the trade unions were forced to call strikes to avoid the eruption of wildcat strikes and protests by workers and youth hostile to the labour law of the PS. But the PS managed to ram the labour law through by mobilising the police-state apparatus under the terms of the state of emergency to crush the strikes and to assault protest marches.

The actions carried out by the unions and their political allies simply aim to avoid being outflanked on their left by rising social anger in the working class against Macron. The unions—which are petty-bourgeois bureaucracies without a mass membership base, financed to the tune of 95 percent of their €4 billion yearly budget by the state and the employers—neither have the ability nor the intention to lead a determined opposition to Macron’s attacks.

In fact, Macron’s decrees, which aim to grant the unions a “union check” financed by the employers and pay out subsidies to the unions to “train” union officials, give the unions a major role in legally approving new contracts cutting their members’ working conditions and violating the Labour Code. This is because the government is confident that they are trusted tools of the state machine against the interests of the working class.

After the truckers’ strike was announced, government spokesman Christophe Castaner warned Thursday that, as in 2010 and 2016, the government will move rapidly to forcibly reopen fuel depots if they were blocked by strike action.

“The principle of taking strike action is fair, but the principle of holding France hostage cannot be so,” Castaner said on France Info. “And so we cannot imagine that a few dozen or a few hundred people could hold up traffic in our country.”

Without stating explicitly that he planned to mobilise the police forces, Castaner stressed that the government would crush blockades of the fuel depots, stating that “it will be necessary because one cannot paralyze France, one cannot prevent people from going to work.”

Castaner’s comment is a warning to workers entering into struggle against Macron’s government and facing the state of emergency, which Macron intends to make permanent by writing its main provisions into common law. To block the rise of a police state in France imposing a historic regression in social conditions via an authoritarian crackdown, workers must organise independently of the trade unions and in opposition to the pseudo-left parties close to the PS, that first introduced the labour law last year.

The working class must build new organisations of struggle to replace the empty shells of the trade unions, and above all, a new political leadership to mobilise political opposition to social cuts, and unify workers across Europe in a struggle against austerity and militarism. This is the task that the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES), the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, sets itself.

The PES insists that the confrontation with Macron cannot be waged as a trade union struggle, but as an international, revolutionary struggle for socialism and to defend all the social rights that workers won in Europe during the 20th century, which are now under threat. In this struggle, the natural allies of workers in France are the workers of the rest of Europe and the world, fighting militarism and the rising danger of police-state rule.

The legacy of the Cassini spacecraft

Don Barrett 

The Cassini spacecraft has been one of the most productive, versatile and inspiring astronomical platforms ever made. Launched on October 15, 1997, this spacecraft, simply by its own exploits, stands as a triumph for a generation of scientists across the globe, and testament to humanity’s vast capacity for exploration far beyond Earth. Friday morning, after nearly 20 years of operation, including 13 years in the system of Saturn, its rings, and its icy moons, Cassini’s journey ended.

Sunlight illuminates the hexagon-shaped jet stream around Saturn's north pole. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Cassini’s demise was as meticulously prepared as its life. As part of the planning for the spacecraft’s final mission extension in 2010, its controllers debated what to do when Cassini finally ran out of fuel. Two propellant systems were available to perform maneuvers at Saturn, but the bulk of the steering was accomplished by gently nudging the spacecraft towards various moons. Using minuscule adjustments in position, Cassini used a succession of gravity assists to change its orbit, allowing it to conserve its fuel and last more than three times its initial mission specifications.

But even with careful management, the fuel reserves would eventually be exhausted. Rather than leave an uncontrollable spacecraft in orbit and potentially contaminate one of the nearby moons biologically, it was decided that Cassini would end its mission by performing a risky series of 22 dives into Saturn’s rings, taking the spacecraft closer to the planet than it had ever been. On its final orbit, Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere, taking one last series of atmospheric measurements before becoming a part of the planet it had studied since 2004.

The spacecraft’s first major achievement upon reaching Saturn was the successful landing of the Huygens probe onto Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, the only soft landing ever conducted beyond the inner Solar System. The data provided by Huygens provided humanity’s first glimpse into a world shrouded by a dense nitrogen, methane and hydrogen atmosphere.

Titan was also studied extensively in 127 targeted encounters by Cassini, its infrared cameras and radar capable of piercing the thick clouds encircling the moon. The portrait that emerged was incredibly rich: Titan was revealed as the only body in the solar system supporting surface liquid, with active streams, rivers, and lakes punctuating the landscape, some of which have changed over the duration of the mission.

Cassini also discovered geyser-like plumes jetting from the moon Enceladus. Its dust analyzer found these plumes produced salt crystals with an “ocean-like” composition, suggesting a water origin. The last close flyby, in 2015, was targeted to pass directly through a plume, the risky maneuver that found molecular hydrogen, further evidence of a subsurface ocean with hydrothermal vents potentially capable of supporting life.

The moon Iapetus, known for centuries to have a bright side and a dark side, was imaged in great detail by Cassini. Images showed even the smallest craters puncturing the dark hemisphere, revealing underlying bright ice. Together with Earth-based observations, a consistent picture emerged of Iapetus accumulating spots of dark debris on its leading hemisphere billions of years ago, leading to a feedback mechanism where this darker area warmed and sublimated underlying ice, which accumulated in the now brilliant areas elsewhere on the moon.

Saturn’s rings, previously studied by the Pioneer and Voyager flybys, proved to have dynamics even richer than expected when imaged constantly over many years. Cassini discovered complex waves rippling through the ring systems and found new shepherding moons responsible for them. The “gap” in Saturn’s rings named after Cassini’s namesake was found to be littered with mile-sized boulders. A concentration of material in Saturn’s A ring, which may birth a new moon, was discovered in 2014, and final images of this region were recorded in Cassini’s last days.

Cassini even performed myriad experiments on its way to Saturn. It carried out studies of Venus, Earth, the Moon, asteroid 2685 Masursky and Jupiter. When Earth and Cassini were on opposite sides of the Sun, radio waves sent between mission control and the spacecraft were used to test Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity by measuring the effect of the Sun’s gravity. Cassini’s measurements agreed with general relativity to one part in 51,000.

Even with the vast amounts of data collected by Cassini, many questions remain unanswered about Saturn and many new ones were raised by Cassini itself. The elementary length of a “day” at Saturn, based on rotation of its core, remains inexact. And the age and exact mass of the rings remains undetermined.

The technical challenges posed by an extended mission to Saturn needed 15 years of pre-launch planning and the combined resources of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency, 17 countries and thousands of scientific personnel to solve. Scientists at NASA who have spent their entire working lives on the mission—the initial work began in 1982—were visibly emotional on the final day of what one called “the perfect spacecraft.”

Cassini required mastery of technologies built over many decades to produce electrical power from radioactively-heated thermionic generators, to operate autonomously because of the two-hour delays in round-trip radio communications, to allow recovery, far beyond the reach of direct human intervention, from unexpected spacecraft anomalies, all the while serving as a stable platform from which its suite of complex scientific instruments could be pointed and the data collected relayed back to Earth.

The Huygens lander represented a different set of challenges, not only to survive its high-speed deceleration to a soft landing on Titan, but to do so supported primarily by measurements made by Cassini itself, which had the additional duty of storing and relaying Huygens’ weak signal to Earth.

Despite Cassini’s success, no other major missions to the outer Solar System are being planned, nor are simpler missions to Saturn under active development. Only one other mission with comparable budget, the Mars rover Curiosity, has been launched in the last two decades. Cassini represents the last echoes of an epoch in which flagship-class missions of exploration beyond Mars were funded and launched.

And yet the technology available to enable such missions has vastly improved since Cassini was constructed. Moreover, the spacecraft has shown us just how much there is still to be learned in our stellar neighborhood. Mission concepts for exploration of the ice and potentially even the oceans lying under the surfaces of Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa exist. They await an epoch in which the scientific aspirations of humankind can be fully given the material resources required to realize them.

Bomb attack on London Underground sets stage for further state repression

Steve James

The explosion of a suspected homemade bomb on a packed Underground commuter train in southwest London Friday morning has become the occasion for a massive police and intelligence operation.

Before anything about the origins of the attack aboard a train at Parsons Green station had officially been made public, the government called a meeting of its COBRA emergency committee. The meeting was convened in the afternoon amid speculation that the UK’s terrorism threat level could be raised from “severe” to “critical”—the highest level. Late Friday evening, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May announced in a televised statement that the threat level was being raised to critical for an undefined period. 

She stated, “For this period, military personnel will replace police officers on guard duties at certain protected sites that are not accessible to the public,” adding, “The public will see more armed police on the transport network and on our streets…” Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said this would free up 1,000 armed police officers for use on the streets.

Earlier, May seized the opportunity to push for more surveillance powers, declaring, “[W]e are looking very carefully at the powers that our police and security service have to make sure they have the powers they need,” while “working with the Internet companies.”

She also announced a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron “to talk about what more we can be doing to ensure that we deal with the terrorist propaganda, with the extremist propaganda, with the hatred that is put out across the Internet.”

During the evening, Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack via its news agency. 

The rush hour attack appears to have been deliberate and indiscriminate. Passengers close by reported hearing a loud bang and seeing a “wall of flame” coming down the train. A number of people suffered burns, while others were injured in the panicked rush that followed the explosion, as commuters scrambled to exit the station.

The London Ambulance Service reported that 29 people were taken to hospital, mostly with flash burns. As of early Friday evening, 21 were still receiving treatment at Imperial, Chelsea and Westminster, and St George’s hospitals.

One passenger spoke of a seeing a burning “white builder’s bucket” in a supermarket bag, with “a lot of wires hanging out of it.” Images and videos circulating on social media appeared to confirm this.

The Daily Mail and other sources said the wires appeared to be fairy lights, which have been used in homemade explosive devices in the past. It appears that the “bucket bomb” device did not explode as intended. Later reports stated the device had a timer of some sort, and a circuit board was recovered from the scene.

Another eyewitness heard a “large bang on the other side of the tube train,” then a “really hot, intense fireball” flew above his head, singeing his hair. He saw people with facial burns.

Another told the Guardian: “Suddenly there was panic, lots of people shouting, screaming, lots of screaming.” He continued, “I saw crying women, there was lots of shouting and screaming, there was a bit of a crush on the stairs going down to the streets. Some people got pushed over and trampled on.”

A woman, Emma Stevie, who was on the train when the explosion happened, described being caught in a “human stampede” as people tried to escape from the train. “I wedged myself in next to a railing, I put myself in the fetal position. There was a pregnant woman underneath me, and I was trying really hard not to crush her. I saw a poor little boy with a smashed-in head and other injuries. It was horrible.”

Transport services were badly disrupted. Train service on the District Line, which crosses the entire width of London, was suspended between Wimbledon and Edgware Road stations. The entire line was subsequently shut down. Roads around Parsons Green station were closed, and bus routes terminated.

Police immediately launched a major operation with a huge manhunt. The incident, initially handled by the British Transport Police, was handed over to the Metropolitan Police’s SO15 anti-terror unit and declared to be terrorist-related. Police, including heavily armed and protected Counter Terrorist Specialist Firearms Officers, were deployed on the streets, a cordon was thrown up around the area, and houses and flats near the station were evacuated by the police. Helicopters circled overhead.

Shortly before midday, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley announced that “hundreds of detectives” were “involved looking at CCTV, forensics work and speaking to witnesses.” Rowley reported that the security service MI5 and the GCHQ spy network were “bringing their intelligence expertise to bear on the case.”

The Guardian reported Friday evening that the police have obtained CCTV images that capture the bomber as he boarded the train with the bomb.

As with all such outrages, there is no reason to assume that the attack comes as a surprise to the British intelligence agencies.

An indication that the security services know more about whoever carried out the attack than they are letting on came in the form of a tweet put out by US President Donald Trump, who called the perpetrators “sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!”

Asked about Trump’s tweet, Prime Minister May rebuked the US president, saying, “I never think it’s helpful for anybody to speculate on what is an ongoing investigation.” The Metropolitan Police described Trump’s comment as “pure speculation.”

The truth is that over the past decade, most terror attacks in Britain and Europe have been carried out by individuals, often radicalised Islamists, who were known to the state, had been monitored for years, and whose associations were of direct use to the major powers in their neo-colonial wars in Africa and the Middle East.

Similar statements were made by May and the British police after the May 22 Manchester Arena suicide bombing attack in which 22 people died. This was in response to US intelligences sources revealing, within hours, the identity of the bomber, Salman Abedi, and the fact that he was well known to British intelligence.

It is now established fact that that Abedi did not act alone, but was part of wider network that had been monitored and allowed to operate by British intelligence for years.

Similarly, the June 3 attack on London Bridge and Borough Market, which killed eight people and injured 48, was perpetrated by three individuals all of whom were well known to the intelligence services and police.

This is the fourth time that the threat level has been placed at "critical" in the past 11 years. The last occasion was following Manchester attack, amid official warnings that another assault was “imminent.” Nearly 1,000 armed troops were mobilised and put onto the streets, mainly in London, to reinforce counterterrorism officers.

The June deployment was in line with Operation Temperer, a covert plan devised by David Cameron’s Conservative government, when May was home secretary.

Temperer followed a series of terror attacks in France by known intelligence assets and informers in 2015. These were seized on by the French state to implement Operation Sentinelle, which deployed 10,000 troops and imposed emergency powers allowing indiscriminate searches and arrests without judicial consent and increased surveillance. Presented as anti-terror measures, the emergency powers are still in effect two years later, to be used against social opposition in the working class.

Temperer was “accidentally” made public when minutes associated with it were uploaded to the National Police Chiefs’ Council website earlier this year. The minutes revealed plans for up to 5,100 troops to be placed on the streets to “augment armed police officers engaged in protective security duties.”

The Daily Mail noted that Temperer could be triggered by the COBRA committee following terrorist attacks, and that the military top brass recognised that the “Army played an important part in national resilience and supported the work going forward.”

“National resilience” could mean almost anything, and makes clear that Temperer is in place to back up the police with the army as and when required. Temperer was kept secret at the time because, according to the Daily Telegraph, then-Prime Minister David Cameron was concerned that comparisons would be made with British Army operations in Northern Ireland during the “Troubles,” the decades-long dirty war against Irish republicans.

CIA vetoes Chelsea Manning’s Harvard fellowship

Eric London

Harvard University’s decision to revoke whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s visiting fellowship at the Kennedy School of Government under pressure from the Central Intelligence Agency is a contemptible act of political cowardice.

Just four months ago, Manning was released from Ft. Leavenworth prison after serving seven years for the “crime” of revealing a government cover-up of US war crimes, including the murder and torture of Iraqi civilians.

For uncovering facts the world would have otherwise never learned about, the Obama administration tried Manning under the Espionage Act and subjected her to what the UN called “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of international law and the US constitution. Since her release, Manning has given several interviews with the press and spoken at public forums, shedding crucial light on her time in captivity, her political motivations for blowing the whistle on the crimes of US imperialism, and her fight on behalf of equal rights for transgender people.

On Wednesday, Harvard announced several additional fellows for its 2017–18 program, including Manning, Clinton campaign manager Robert Mook and former Trump administration Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

Within 48 hours, Manning’s fellowship was vetoed by the Central Intelligence Agency and revoked by Harvard.

On Thursday morning, barely a day after Harvard’s initial announcement, former CIA Director Mike Morell resigned from his Kennedy School fellowship in protest, writing to Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf, “I cannot be part of an organization” that “honors a convicted felon,” adding: “I have an obligation to my conscience.”

At 6:00 p.m. Thursday, current CIA Director Michael Pompeo refused to show-up for a talk he was scheduled to give at the Kennedy School. He then published a letter to Elmendorf that reads: “After much deliberation in the wake of Harvard’s announcement of American traitor Chelsea Manning as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Politics, my conscience and duty to the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency will not permit me to betray their trust by appearing to support Harvard’s decision with my appearance at tonight’s event.”

Both men refer to their wounded consciences, but neither should blush.

Morrell is a vocal defender of the CIA’s torture tactics and attacked the 2014 Senate report detailing the agency’s methods as “deeply flawed” in his memoir. He later refused to answer whether “rectal rehydration” tactics used by the CIA constitute torture. He is also an advocate for escalating CIA drone strikes.

Pompeo, a former Congressman, was referred to as “the congressman from Koch” for his subservience to the billionaire Koch brothers in his home district of Wichita, Kansas, where Koch Industries is based. Pompeo called for whistleblower Edward Snowden to “be given a death sentence” and said Muslim religious leaders were “complicit” for terrorist attacks like the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Under what legal or political authority are the current and former CIA directors intervening? Why should Harvard University care what Morell and Pompeo have to say about what takes place on campus? An honest college dean would have replied by telling them they have no business interfering in the affairs of a major American university.

But hours after Pompeo’s letter, Elmendorf revoked Manning’s fellowship. Without referencing Morell’s or Pompeo’s comments and without acknowledging any outside pressure, Elmendorf published a statement just after midnight explaining that Manning’s conduct does not “fulfill the values of public service to which we aspire.”

It would take a multi-volume tome to list the assassinations, murders, death squads, drug deals, coups, and other crimes committed by the CIA Murder, Inc. in its 69-year history. Now, the agency exercises such influence that its leadership apparently dictates the policies of the US’s most prestigious universities and makes their deans shake in their boots. The power of the military-intelligence agencies is reflected in the groveling and nervous tone of Elmendorf’s letter:

“We did not intend to honor [Manning] in any way or to endorse any of her words or deeds… I see more clearly now that many people view a Visiting Fellow title as an honorific… In retrospect, though, I think my assessment…for Chelsea Manning was wrong.”

The degree to which universities have grown dependent on funding and institutional support from the military-intelligence apparatus is among the more sordid effects of the “war on terror.” Concerned over the prospect of losing part of their $36 billion endowment, Harvard’s administrators no doubt panicked over threats from donors from the military, finance, and political establishment for whom recognition of Manning is dangerous and unacceptable.

In an earlier period, the relationship between the CIA and domestic institutions would not have been so shameless. It was a major national scandal when New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan revealed on February 14, 1967 that the CIA was secretly financing the National Student Association, a liberal organization with chapters at campuses across the country.

The Guardian reports that Manning hung up the phone when Elmendorf called to justify his decision. According to a source present with Manning at the time of the conversation, Elmendorf “sounded audibly nervous.” When Manning’s team asked him to explain why the university would continue to honor Spicer and former Trump campaign chairman Corey Lewandowski (also a 2017–18 Harvard visiting fellow), Elmendorf replied that in contrast to Manning, Spicer and Lewandowski “brought something to the table.” Manning justifiably hung up.

Manning publicly denounced Harvard’s decision, tweeting: “This is what a military/police/intelligence state looks like, the CIA determines what is and is not taught at Harvard.”

This is not a mere figure of speech. The Kennedy School in particular is a platform for the training and development of senior military and intelligence personnel.

On program, the “National Security Fellows,” for example, serves to train “US military officers who are eligible for senior development education and equivalent civilian officials from the broader Intelligence Community,” according to Harvard’s website.

The military, not the university, determines enrollment: “Selection for this program is handled internally by the respective military services and federal government agencies.”

The “Intelligence and Defense” project “links defense and intelligence agencies with Belfer [a division of the Kennedy School] researchers, faculty, and Kennedy School students, to facilitate better policy-making in the field and enrich the education of fellows and students about defense and intelligence.” Classes for these programs and others like them are taught by a host of current and former generals, spies, prosecutors, and diplomats. Some course listings include the warning: “The seminar is off the record and nothing said can be published or recorded without the speaker’s consent.”

Harvard receives roughly $53 million per year in funding from the Defense Department. In 2015, VICE News ranked it the “most militarized” school among the elite group of schools referred to as the “Ivy League.” It is currently running an art and history exhibit titled “To Serve Better Thy Country: Four Centuries of Harvard and the Military.”

The transformation of the university into a think-tank for American imperialism is taking place in the face of the opposition from the bulk of the school’s student body, the overwhelming majority of whom will be disgusted with Harvard’s acquiescence to CIA bullying. Anti-war sentiment is traditionally so firmly rooted in the student body that the administration was only able to re-open a Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) recruitment office in 2012, forty years after students banned the military from the campus during the Vietnam War.

After a quarter century of war, there is hardly a decision made in any of the official institutions of bourgeois power—the political parties, the corporate television channels, the trade unions, corporations like Google and Amazon, the universities—where the military and intelligence agencies do not have the final say.

In Context: NA-120 Lahore By-election

Sarral Sharma

The by-election for Lahore's National Assembly constituency (NA)-120 - previously NA-95 - seat will take place on 17 September. The seat fell vacant after the disqualification of Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's on 28 July following the Supreme Court verdict in the Panama Papers case. Through an assessment of the contesting candidates and their political agendas for the election, this article seeks to determine who stands the likeliest chance of winning, and why.

There are 44 candidates contesting for this seat; but the two key contenders are Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's (PML-N) candidate, Begum Kulsoom Nawaz Sharif, and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) candidate, Dr Yasmin Rashid. Other notable candidates include Pakistan People's Party's (PPP) Faisal Mir, Jamaat-e-Islami’s (JeI) Ziauddin Ansari, and independent candidate, Qari Yaqoob Sheikh, and they may have a limited role to play in the upcoming election.

The PML-N might not find it difficult to win the NA-120 constituency given how Nawaz Sharif won from the NA-120 seat five consecutive times, in 1985, 1988, 1990, 1993 and 1997. The constituency is regarded as Sharif's stronghold. The party has fielded Kulsoom Nawaz despite her serious illness, and Maryam Nawaz is tasked with leading the political campaign. Incidentally, Kulsoom and Maryam are Nawaz's spouse and daughter respectively. Amid reports of a possible political feud in the Sharif family with Hamza Sharif - son of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif - withdrew from electioneering. This would be viewed as Maryam's political anointment as Nawaz's potential political heir.

The PML-N appears to be focusing on consolidating its electoral base in both Province of Punjab (PP) constituencies, PP-139 and PP-140, which fall under NA-120. In the 2013 election, Sharif won a 10,000-vote lead in PP-140 compared to the lead of over 30,000 votes in PP-139 against PTI's Rashid. Therefore, the party's agenda is also to improve the overall tally in both the provincial constituencies in order to create a strong political base before the 2018 general election. More importantly, a win with a comfortable margin will prove critical for the PML-N's future in Punjab, and to an extent, might also address the doubts some have raised regarding Maryam's leadership. Still, factors such as a possible anti-incumbency sentiment, party infighting and the impact of the Panama papers trial on local electorate might limit their victory margin.

The PTI has again fielded Yasmin Rashid, who lost to Nawaz in the 2013 election. Rashid views Nawaz's disqualification as an opportunity to avenge her defeat in the previous election. Despite being the PML-N's home turf, representatives of the NA-120 constituency and the Punjab government have been accused of indifference due to the sorry state of infrastructure including poor roads, regular power outages, dismal sanitation facilities and unavailability of clean drinking water. Rashid has chosen door-to-door campaigning as well as addressing Mohalla (local area) meetings and erecting party flexes and banners highlighting local issues related to lack of basic amenities in the constituency.

Former PPP supporters as well as some PML-N supporters now disenchanted with the Party, and the youth constitute the PTI's core electoral base. PTI Chief Imran Khan, who had previously participated in electioneering, is not active this time, possibly because the Election Commission of Pakistan enforced a code of conduct barring campaigning by parliamentarians. Yet, he held a rally in Lahore on 8 September, outside the NA-120 constituency, to seek support for Rashid and to boost the party cadres' morale. PTI's win in the by-election may prove to be a referendum against the PML-N government ahead of the 2018 general elections. More importantly, Khan will stand vindicated in his anti-corruption campaign.

PPP’s Faisal Mir too is in the fray with the Party's old guard trying to re-enter Punjab politics after an embarrassing defeat in 2013. Although the PPP may not make a big impact in this election, the party is putting its best foot forward to prepare for the 2018 polls. Some PPP loyalists who supported PTI's Rashid in 2013 have reportedly returned to the former party's fold since Mir's nomination. However, the weak central leadership and limited political outreach outside Sindh province may dampen the party's future in Punjab. Still, it is possible that the PPP could improve its overall electoral standing and may make a dent in the opposition parties' vote share. 

Other smaller contenders such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), and the new entrant Qari Yaqoob Sheikh, an independent nominee supported by Hafiz Saeed's Jamaat ud Dawa (JuD), might garner some support from right wing voters in the constituency. However, the main contest will be between the two main opposition parties. If the PTI wins the upcoming by-election, it may signal a possible shift in Pakistan's political setup which might be more visible as the country goes for polls in 2018. Conclusively, Nawaz's political (and personal) image and Maryam's future as a potential leader of the PML-N are at stake in this election.

Stop the London Death Fair!

Michael Dickinson

Roll up!  Roll up!  Ballistic missiles and hand grenades!  Drones, helicopters and warships!  Rocket launchers, tanks and assault rifles!  Welcome to the biennial London Arms Fair!  Showing now until 15th September at the Excel Centre in Docklands, the Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEI)  – “a world-leading event that brings together the defence and security sector to innovate and share knowledge” – presents one of the world’s biggest arms bazaars, displaying the latest high-tech arms and surveillance technology, crowd control and weaponry.  This year the exhibition is split into five key zones: air, land, security and joint, all showcasing the latest equipment and systems. DSEI is organised by Clarion Events, with extensive cooperation from the British government.

Military personnel, politicians, private defence contractors and consultants mingle as they shop. Countries accused of war crimes and human rights abuses, Algeria, Angola, Colombia, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, the UAE, and Ukraine are among the invited.  Although not an official guest, the Israeli arms industry has special pavilions at the venue, where over 34,000 visitors are expected to view the latest in killing weaponry for sale, exhibited by more than 1,600 arms companies, including the US and UK giants Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and BAE Systems.

With authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and Azerbaijan among the official UK government guests in attendance, this year’s keynote speakers at the opening day conference included British Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and many of the top brass in the UK military establishment.  Fox said that overseas governments had an inaliable right to defend themselves  and that if they could not buy the equipment they required from developed countries with effective controls, like the UK, they would look elsewhere.  Last year Britain’s arms export  industry turned over 3 billion pounds.

Andrew Smith, a spokesman from the activist group Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) said:  “DSEI is one of the biggest arms fairs in the world. It exists purely to maximise arms sales. Prime Minister Theresa May and her colleagues may talk about promoting human rights but DSEI could not happen without the full support of government.  A lot of the regimes in attendance have been linked to terrible human rights abuses, and events like DSEI only make them more likely in future. It is vitally important to spread as much awareness as possible of this terrible arms fair taking place. ”

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s has said that he was opposed to London being used as a market place for countries that contribute to human rights abuses, but that he had no powers to stop it.  A group called  Stop the Arms Fair https://www.stopthearmsfair.org.uk/ had other ideas.  They organised a week of action to halt the fair before it started, and to draw attention to an event that prefers to keep a low public profile.

Growing numbers of protesters gathered and set up camp with tents on the grass outside the Excel exhibition centre’s entrance last Monday, and in an attempt to disrupt and delay the lorries arriving with equipment to set up the show, began to blockade the way by dancing, singing, theatre, clowning, playing football, sitting or lying in the road, while surrounded by large numbers of police in bright yellow jackets, some on horses.  Over 100 protestors were arrested during the week, mostly charged with obstruction.

Banksy, the elusive street artist, has donated a new simple but powerful work to ‘Arts the Arms Fair’, an exhibition running along with the protest. ‘Civilian Drone Attack’, shows the horrified stick figure of a child next to a burning building.  Three drones circle above.  The piece will be auctioned off on Friday and proceeds donated to CAAT.  Ahmed Jahaf, a Yemeni artist who has submitted 10 works to the exhibition, said:  “British, American and people of other countries who sell their bombs to Saudi Arabia and UAE must know that we in Yemen regard their governments as partners in the massacres taking place.”  (The UK has sold 3.6 million pounds of arms to Saudia Arabia since the conflict with Yemen began.)

Organiser Sam Walton said “Less than 10 per cent of Londoners even know the arms fair  exists.  They [DSEI] want to stay in the shadows and what Art the Arms Fair is about is making this the most talked-about arms fair, so people can make their own judgements. One way to do that is through art.”

(Incidentally, this year the biennial London Arms Fair coincides with three important anniversaries in the history of weapons and warfare.  150 years ago in 1867 dynamite was invented by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel.  60 years ago in 1957 the Russians launched the first intercontinental ballistic missile.  And 40 years ago today in 1977 the neutron bomb, which kills people but leaves buildings intact, was developed in the USA.  Now there’s a bargain!)

The Afghan Quagmire

Cesar Chelala

It is impossible to win a war that you cannot define. That seems to be the main lesson to be drawn from Afghanistan, where a so-called victory seems ever more unreachable. It is also the conclusion of several experts on the region, who fear U.S. forces would be mired forever in that unjustly punished country.

Civilians can sometimes offer insights into a war situation that professional warriors cannot do. In 2001, American writer Philip Caputo offered a unique insight into the Afghan psychology. He had spent a month in Afghanistan with the mujahedeen as a reporter, during the Afghans’ decade-long war with the Soviets.

At some point in the 1980s, he was accompanying a platoon of mujahedeen who were escorting 1,000 refugees into Pakistan. They had to cross a mountain torrent on a very primitive bridge, consisting essentially of two logs laid side by side. In front of him was a 10-year-old boy, separated from his family, his feet swollen from several days of barefoot marching.

When Caputo realized that the boy was terrified fearing that he could fall into the rapids below and almost certain death, he carried him to the other side. With the help of his interpreter he found the father and handed the boy to him. The father, rather than thanking him slapped the boy in the face and poked Caputo in the chest, shouting angrily at him. Caputo was obviously shocked.

He asked his interpreter about the boy father’s reaction and the interpreter explained to him, “He is angry at the boy for not crossing on his own, and angry with you for helping him. Now, he says, his son will expect somebody to help him whenever he runs into difficulties.”

Caputo concludes, “Well, that little boy probably learned. I don’t know what became of him, but in my imagination, I see our troops encountering him: now 31, inured to hardship and accustomed to combat, unafraid of death, with an army of men like him at his side.”

In a few words, Caputo magisterially captured the strength of the Afghan soldier, able to fight with the most primitive weapons against the greatest empires on earth. When these soldiers feel their land usurped by foreign forces, their strength is multiplied. And this is just one of the obstacles confronting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

There are increasing doubts that a plain increase in the number of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan can lead to a victory progressively more difficult to define. Matthew Hoh, a former Foreign Service officer and former Marine Corps captain who became the first U.S. official to resign in protest over the Afghan war, declared to the Washington Post, “Upon arriving in Afghanistan and serving in both the East and South (and particularly speaking with local Afghans) I found that the majority of those who were fighting us and the Afghan central government were fighting us because they felt occupied.”

In the meantime, the costs of the occupation keep mounting. According to some estimates the total spending in Afghanistan is now more than $2 trillion, not even counting the future costs of interest for the money borrowed to finance the war. Those additional costs could add trillions of dollars to the total tab.

To those costs should be added veterans’ medical and disability payments over the next 40 years, which could be over $1 trillion. Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, says, “The cost of caring for war veterans typically peaks 30 to 40 years or more after a conflict.”

Since the start of the war, more than 2,350 US troops have been killed, in addition to thousands of allied forces. The toll on Afghans has been even greater, with tens of thousands Afghan civilian and military who died in the conflict. Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires. It should more properly be called the graveyard of illusions.