The Socialist 12 October 2001

STOP THE WAR

Devastating Consequences Of War

Nuclear Threat? War Raises New Fears

Vietnam - How The Anti-War Movement Grew

Bush And Blair's War: What We Say

Railtrack - New Labour's U-Turn

Previous issues, etc

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STOP THE WAR

THESE ATTACKS will not bring justice to the victims of the World Trade Center atrocity - neither will they destroy terrorism or the conditions which breed support for terrorism.

The streets of New York and London cannot be made safer by responding to terrorist attacks with the launch of war.

By Dave Nellist, Socialist Party councillor Coventry and Socialist Alliance National Chair

Innocent Afghan civilians have already been killed and many more face death, starvation and injury. People remember the Gulf War, when US cruise missiles hit a civilian refuge in Iraq, burning to death 300 Iraqis, most of them women and children. They also remember the war in Kosova, when 'smart' missiles missed their targets, killing fleeing refugees.

Bush and Blair say this is a 'humanitarian war' because they're dropping food as well as bombs. But their bombs - at $1 million each - have killed four Afghan workers employed by the UN on land mine clearance operations.

Aid workers agree that this is a propaganda exercise to try and shore up support for the war. More than seven million Afghans are threatened with starvation. These food drops are only a fraction of what is really needed.

There's talk of these attacks contributing to the bringing down of the Taliban government. If that happens and the Northern Alliance take control that will not bring democracy to Afghanistan.

In their three years of running Afghanistan, from 1992, those who now are in the Northern Alliance outlawed all opposition and swept aside democratic rights. Both the Taliban and Northern Alliance were funded, armed and trained by America, Britain and other countries in the 1980s.

Socialists would welcome the fall of the Taliban government but that is the job of the ordinary people of Afghanistan, not for the West to re-install either a discredited former king or help the Northern Alliance back into power on the basis of "my enemy's enemy is my friend".

Socialists throughout the country will be working hard to build a broad and inclusive anti-war movement. But ending support for terrorism requires ending the conditions which breed the methods of terrorism - global poverty, inequality and repression.

We need to fight for socialism world-wide. Join us now.