From harel Sun Oct 14 20:48:07 -0700 2001
From: Harel Barzilai 
To: map@pencil.math.missouri.edu
Afghanistan today: Disaster or GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY?


* "Are we going to preside over deaths from starvation of hundreds of
* thousands - maybe millions - of people this winter because we didn't
* use the window of opportunity before winter closes?" 
*  --Mary Robinson,  United Nations Human Rights Commissioner 

As the BBC article excerpted below suggests, that question is now
before us. We are on the edge of a massive, gigantic human catastrophe
that would make the horrific events of Sept 11, in terms of numbers,
small by comparison. And we risk being the ones who committed it.

Before sharing the details of the risk of millions dead from BBC's
report, we should notice that there is a ray of hope: when combined
with a second news item, what we have before us too, however, is a
truly Golden Opportunity.  The Taliban has just made a compromise
offer to hand Bin Laden over to a neutral country if the bombing is
halted, and Washington provides some evidence of Bin Laden's
involvement in the 9/11 bombings.

These two events together as we shall see below, allow us to avert a
humanitarian disaster, show the world we care, and simultaneously
Raise the pressure on the Taliban. This is the kind of opportunity we
should jump at. But first let's  review the situation;

There are two questions. The first one is the wrong question to ask,
though it will be the one that we will hear most often. The second one
is very important to ask ourselves, though it may never be heard.

THE WRONG QUESTION

The wrong question is, "is this just a ploy by the Taliban?" because
the question assumes, first of all, the "bad guys" never compromise or
make genuine offers; in fact history shows the opposite: when
compromise is necessary for them, Bad Guys will be the first to jump
at making concessions and compromises because they are nothing if not
pragmatic.

The question not only forgets that the Taliban have every motivation
to be genuine (they would much rather hand Bin Laden over than be
deposed) but also forgets the fact that it would be very, very easy to
find out if the Taliban's offer is real: like in a poker game we can
"see them" on their offer, together with a time limit of so and so
many days, and by doing so, we would see very easily whether the
Taliban's offer is real. Is Bush afraid to find out whether the offer
is real?

THE KEY QUESTION: OUR GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

The key question is, will be seize the Golden Opportunity. If
suspending the bombings, in order to prevent a humanitarian disaster,
was a good idea BEFORE the Taliban's offers (whether sincere or not),
then it is still a good idea AFTER the Taliban's offer, too.

Only now we can do what was a good idea to begin with, namely suspend
the bombings for long enough to prevent a disaster as the UN's Mary
Robinson stresses, and at the same time, "for free', we get something
else: we get the clock ticking and the pressure on the Taliban to hand
over Bin Laden. All we have to do is share with the world the evidence
Bush says we have plenty of, of Bin Laden's guilt, that's it.

We don't  even "lose any time" (as if the Taliban, whom we've not militarily
attacked for years and years, are going to become any more or less
easy or difficult to defeat when we add a few days more waiting, after
this initial string of bombings, to the initial set of years of inaction).
We don't even lose any time since we need to suspend the bombing
to avert a humanitarian disaster anyway, so the Taliban have given
us a gift: the ability to put much more pressure  on them to hand
over Bin Laden, for doing something that we already need to do
anyway (suspend the bombings), and providing the evidence Bush says
we already have.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY MARY ROBINSON'S WORDS:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1598000/1598797.stm]

AFGHANISTAN'S CRISIS COULD TURN INTO A HUMANITARIAN DISASTER on the
same scale as Rwanda's in the mid-1990s, United Nations Human Rights
Commissioner Mary Robinson has warned.

Speaking in a BBC interview, Mrs Robinson said UP TO SEVEN MILLION
PEOPLE WERE AT RISK in Afghanistan, AND THERE WAS LITTLE TIME to act
before winter set in.  
	
A PAUSE IN THE US BOMBING CAMPAIGN WOULD ALLOW MORE FOOD AID TO GET
THROUGH, SHE SAID. 

The UK International Development Secretary, Clare Short, has said
THERE IS A NEED TO DOUBLE the amount of aid currently getting into
Afghanistan.

Aid agencies are having trouble carrying out food distributions as
their main supplier, the World Food Programme (WFP), has largely
stopped delivering food around Afghanistan.  

Mrs Robinson said the crisis was "almost like a Rwanda-style
problem". Up to 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred in
Rwanda in 1994 and thousands of Hutus died in a subsequent exodus.

UN bakeries have been supporting 350,000 Afghans "There's been three
years of famine in Afghanistan, there's been military conflict
internally, NOW THERE'S THIS MILITARY ASSAULT AND I UNDERSTAND THE
REASONS, BUT WE HAVE TO HAVE AS A PRIORITY THE CIVILIAN POPULATION AND
THEIR NEED TO BE SECURED FOR THE COMING WINTER,"Mrs Robinson told BBC
television.

Mrs Short said 1,000 tonnes of aid was leaving for the Afghan capital
Kabul daily, which was "a lot more than we had before".

"If we can carry on for five weeks, every day, at that sort of level,
we're getting near the target to move enough food in," she said.
The WFP said on Saturday that its convoys of aid had reached Kabul and
Kandahar, RAISING HOPES THAT REGULAR SHIPMENTS COULD BE MADE BEFORE
THE WINTER SET IN.

HIGH DEATH RATE

But aid workers say the hungriest and poorest Afghans ARE DYING OF
HUNGER AND COLD AT RATES FAR HIGHER than the aid agencies consider to
be crisis levels.  

Among the estimated 10,000 refugees who fled Taleban attacks on their
villages this summer to the high mountains in central Afghanistan,
about four people ARE DYING EVERY DAY.  

* "Are we going to preside over deaths from starvation of hundreds of
* thousands - maybe millions - of people this winter because we didn't
* use the window of opportunity before winter closes?" 
*  --Mary Robinson,  United Nations Human Rights Commissioner 

********************End of first  BBC Story quotations**********
Second story:

Another 200 Afghani Civilians Dead due to a "wrong digit" in 
US "Smart Bomb" reports BBC:

BBC Reports: "Earlier on Sunday, the Taliban took a group of
international journalists to a village near the city of Jalalabad in
the east of the country where they say nearly 200 residents were
killed by US bombing last week.

BBC reporter Rahim Ullah Yusuf Zai said the village, which stank of
rotting corpses, had been completely destroyed and that journalists
had been shown shrapnel and an unexploded bomb.

US military officials have not confirmed the attack, which is said to
have taken place last Wednesday.  But our reporter says he is in no
doubt that the devastation in the village was caused by a US strike.

The reporters were met with furious protests by distraught locals,
many of whom said they had lost relatives in the attack. 

The bomb was meant to hit a helicopter at Kabul airport, BUT A WRONGLY
ENTERED DIGIT in its global positioning system meant it missed its
target."

Oops, wrong digit, 200 dead, too bad.

********************End of second  BBC Story quotations**********

IN SUMMARY: to save countless lives per Mary Robinson's
report, we need to half the bombing, and as a bonus
we become heros by letting the independent relief agencies do
their work:

We don't  even "lose any time" (as if the Taliban, whom we've not militarily
attacked for years and years, are going to become any more or less
easy or difficult to defeat when we add a few days more waiting, after
this initial string of bombings, to the initial set of years of inaction).
We don't even lose any time since we need to suspend the bombing
to avert a humanitarian disaster anyway, so the Taliban have given
us a gift: the ability to put much more pressure  on them to hand
over Bin Laden, for doing something that we already need to do
anyway (suspend the bombings), and providing the evidence Bush says
we already have.

****************************************
Other importan points to consider -- claims and responses:
****************************************

"Bush has no ulterior motives."

It might interest you to know that the BBC has already reported weeks
ago that a former Pakistani top diplomat revealed that Washington was
planning IN MID-JULY, long before the terrorist attacks, to invade
Afghanistan ("this fall, before winter"):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1550000/1550366.stm

Whether you think this was a reasonable idea, a bad idea, or somewhere
in between, the fact remains that Bush has an ulterior reason to NOT
want a compromise where Bin Laden is handed over since as we now know
(but has not been very widely reported in the US corporate run media),
he does not want the disappearance of the excuse for the invasion (the
invasion that, we now know, was planned long before 9/11 provided an
excuse for it)

First, Bush's zeal to increase militarism is well known.  His father
put in the military "solution" which has led Saddam stronger than ever
before, caused hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, and it now
appears, because of 10 full years of US military occupation, this not
surprisingly helped inflame anger in that region, the kind of anti-US
anger that the violent extremists feed on.

It there any shred of a doubt that if the evidence was strong, they
would immediately jump at the opportunity to show it to the American
people, rather than hide it from the American people? There is only
one way to find out: the American people need to insist that their
government show them the evidence, rather than have Washington be a
government that hides it from its own people.

"The  Taliban are not interested in compromises"

In fact, the evidence suggests that it is quite real: the Taliban 
would much rather hand over Bin Laden than be destroyed. But there
hasn't been a single country in the history of the world which was
willing to hand over someone else on an Ultimatum, with ZERO evidence
of their guilt, to another country.

Bush claims they have a good deal of evidence.  If they have such
great evidence (which they have been hiding from the American people,
but behind closed doors, we have been told, have shared it with
European leaders), then it should be all that much easier to show the
Taliban -- better yet, show the whole world, that evidence.

Why are our (presumably "elected") leaders, in our democracy, so
desperately insistent that they NOT show us, the American People,
their evidence?  Could it be that they fear we, the American People,
might not find it that convincing?

It there any shred of a doubt that if the evidence was strong, they
would immediately RUSH to show it to the American people?

Again, there is a very easy way to find out, very, very quickly,
whether the Taliban offer is serious: force them to show whether
they are serious by putting the evidence on the table and suggesting a
fair, neutral third country for them to hand Bin Laden to.

4) Bin Laden is the mastermind.

The credible reports from those who know about the region, like
Robert Fisk of the London Independent who has lived in the region
for years and has even met Bin Laden, is that what is called 
"Bin Laden's network", Al Qaeda  is very decentralized, and Bin Laden
hasn't access to international phones, or to fax, or to the
internet, etc.

It is still conceivable that Bin-Laden himself was
behind the 9/11 attacks despite his isolation and 
even despite the highly decentralized nature of  Al Qaeda.

What there can be little doubt of, however, is that
given this decentralized nature, the attacks could have taken
place without Bin Laden (whether  we confirm that they did take
place without his finger pressing a red button, or not..)
and that therefore, the emphasis on one single man is 
very misleading.

And if we want to prevent terrorism and deaths, it is
immoral to pursue a path that is so misleading as to 
minimize our chances of success. Could it be that
this focus is because US leaders have always used 
"devils" to scare and control the American people, and
that a decentralized network isn't as convenient a "devil" as one man
(after all, a devil needs a face, and one man has a face, while a
decentralized network does not).

Could it be that this focus on one man also is a
convenient way to avoid unpleasant questions, such as how
our own CIA used our own tax dollars to help set up, 
fund, and train the Taliban, with terrorism "how to" training as part
of that package? Besides the hijackers who killed themselves along with
their victims, there are surely others who bear responsibility. I hope
we find those others. But we need to go after those, right here, who
funded, helped, and trained the Taliban. First, because it's morally
necessary not to turn a blind eye to some while only going after
others, who helped them.

But secondly, because morally we must do what will make the biggest
difference to preventing terrorism. That our own role increasing
terrorism is a huge one is obvious: how much would you pay for a magic
button that, if pressed, let you go back in time and prevent eh
funding and training we gave the Taliban that let them grow in power,
and from which a still more extreme minority, Al Qaeda, could emerge?

From harel Sun Oct 14 20:49:00 -0700 2001
From: Harel Barzilai 
To: map@pencil.math.missouri.edu
Subject: Afghanistan today: Disaster or GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY?


* "Are we going to preside over deaths from starvation of hundreds of
* thousands - maybe millions - of people this winter because we didn't
* use the window of opportunity before winter closes?" 
*  --Mary Robinson,  United Nations Human Rights Commissioner 

As the BBC article excerpted below suggests, that question is now
before us. We are on the edge of a massive, gigantic human catastrophe
that would make the horrific events of Sept 11, in terms of numbers,
small by comparison. And we risk being the ones who committed it.

Before sharing the details of the risk of millions dead from BBC's
report, we should notice that there is a ray of hope: when combined
with a second news item, what we have before us too, however, is a
truly Golden Opportunity.  The Taliban has just made a compromise
offer to hand Bin Laden over to a neutral country if the bombing is
halted, and Washington provides some evidence of Bin Laden's
involvement in the 9/11 bombings.

These two events together as we shall see below, allow us to avert a
humanitarian disaster, show the world we care, and simultaneously
Raise the pressure on the Taliban. This is the kind of opportunity we
should jump at. But first let's  review the situation;

There are two questions. The first one is the wrong question to ask,
though it will be the one that we will hear most often. The second one
is very important to ask ourselves, though it may never be heard.

THE WRONG QUESTION

The wrong question is, "is this just a ploy by the Taliban?" because
the question assumes, first of all, the "bad guys" never compromise or
make genuine offers; in fact history shows the opposite: when
compromise is necessary for them, Bad Guys will be the first to jump
at making concessions and compromises because they are nothing if not
pragmatic.

The question not only forgets that the Taliban have every motivation
to be genuine (they would much rather hand Bin Laden over than be
deposed) but also forgets the fact that it would be very, very easy to
find out if the Taliban's offer is real: like in a poker game we can
"see them" on their offer, together with a time limit of so and so
many days, and by doing so, we would see very easily whether the
Taliban's offer is real. Is Bush afraid to find out whether the offer
is real?

THE KEY QUESTION: OUR GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

The key question is, will be seize the Golden Opportunity. If
suspending the bombings, in order to prevent a humanitarian disaster,
was a good idea BEFORE the Taliban's offers (whether sincere or not),
then it is still a good idea AFTER the Taliban's offer, too.

Only now we can do what was a good idea to begin with, namely suspend
the bombings for long enough to prevent a disaster as the UN's Mary
Robinson stresses, and at the same time, "for free', we get something
else: we get the clock ticking and the pressure on the Taliban to hand
over Bin Laden. All we have to do is share with the world the evidence
Bush says we have plenty of, of Bin Laden's guilt, that's it.

We don't  even "lose any time" (as if the Taliban, whom we've not militarily
attacked for years and years, are going to become any more or less
easy or difficult to defeat when we add a few days more waiting, after
this initial string of bombings, to the initial set of years of inaction).
We don't even lose any time since we need to suspend the bombing
to avert a humanitarian disaster anyway, so the Taliban have given
us a gift: the ability to put much more pressure  on them to hand
over Bin Laden, for doing something that we already need to do
anyway (suspend the bombings), and providing the evidence Bush says
we already have.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY MARY ROBINSON'S WORDS:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1598000/1598797.stm]

AFGHANISTAN'S CRISIS COULD TURN INTO A HUMANITARIAN DISASTER on the
same scale as Rwanda's in the mid-1990s, United Nations Human Rights
Commissioner Mary Robinson has warned.

Speaking in a BBC interview, Mrs Robinson said UP TO SEVEN MILLION
PEOPLE WERE AT RISK in Afghanistan, AND THERE WAS LITTLE TIME to act
before winter set in.  
	
A PAUSE IN THE US BOMBING CAMPAIGN WOULD ALLOW MORE FOOD AID TO GET
THROUGH, SHE SAID. 

The UK International Development Secretary, Clare Short, has said
THERE IS A NEED TO DOUBLE the amount of aid currently getting into
Afghanistan.

Aid agencies are having trouble carrying out food distributions as
their main supplier, the World Food Programme (WFP), has largely
stopped delivering food around Afghanistan.  

Mrs Robinson said the crisis was "almost like a Rwanda-style
problem". Up to 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred in
Rwanda in 1994 and thousands of Hutus died in a subsequent exodus.

UN bakeries have been supporting 350,000 Afghans "There's been three
years of famine in Afghanistan, there's been military conflict
internally, NOW THERE'S THIS MILITARY ASSAULT AND I UNDERSTAND THE
REASONS, BUT WE HAVE TO HAVE AS A PRIORITY THE CIVILIAN POPULATION AND
THEIR NEED TO BE SECURED FOR THE COMING WINTER,"Mrs Robinson told BBC
television.

Mrs Short said 1,000 tonnes of aid was leaving for the Afghan capital
Kabul daily, which was "a lot more than we had before".

"If we can carry on for five weeks, every day, at that sort of level,
we're getting near the target to move enough food in," she said.
The WFP said on Saturday that its convoys of aid had reached Kabul and
Kandahar, RAISING HOPES THAT REGULAR SHIPMENTS COULD BE MADE BEFORE
THE WINTER SET IN.

HIGH DEATH RATE

But aid workers say the hungriest and poorest Afghans ARE DYING OF
HUNGER AND COLD AT RATES FAR HIGHER than the aid agencies consider to
be crisis levels.  

Among the estimated 10,000 refugees who fled Taleban attacks on their
villages this summer to the high mountains in central Afghanistan,
about four people ARE DYING EVERY DAY.  

* "Are we going to preside over deaths from starvation of hundreds of
* thousands - maybe millions - of people this winter because we didn't
* use the window of opportunity before winter closes?" 
*  --Mary Robinson,  United Nations Human Rights Commissioner 

********************End of first  BBC Story quotations**********
Second story:

Another 200 Afghani Civilians Dead due to a "wrong digit" in 
US "Smart Bomb" reports BBC:

BBC Reports: "Earlier on Sunday, the Taliban took a group of
international journalists to a village near the city of Jalalabad in
the east of the country where they say nearly 200 residents were
killed by US bombing last week.

BBC reporter Rahim Ullah Yusuf Zai said the village, which stank of
rotting corpses, had been completely destroyed and that journalists
had been shown shrapnel and an unexploded bomb.

US military officials have not confirmed the attack, which is said to
have taken place last Wednesday.  But our reporter says he is in no
doubt that the devastation in the village was caused by a US strike.

The reporters were met with furious protests by distraught locals,
many of whom said they had lost relatives in the attack. 

The bomb was meant to hit a helicopter at Kabul airport, BUT A WRONGLY
ENTERED DIGIT in its global positioning system meant it missed its
target."

Oops, wrong digit, 200 dead, too bad.

********************End of second  BBC Story quotations**********

IN SUMMARY: to save countless lives per Mary Robinson's
report, we need to half the bombing, and as a bonus
we become heros by letting the independent relief agencies do
their work:

We don't  even "lose any time" (as if the Taliban, whom we've not militarily
attacked for years and years, are going to become any more or less
easy or difficult to defeat when we add a few days more waiting, after
this initial string of bombings, to the initial set of years of inaction).
We don't even lose any time since we need to suspend the bombing
to avert a humanitarian disaster anyway, so the Taliban have given
us a gift: the ability to put much more pressure  on them to hand
over Bin Laden, for doing something that we already need to do
anyway (suspend the bombings), and providing the evidence Bush says
we already have.

****************************************
Other importan points to consider -- claims and responses:
****************************************

"Bush has no ulterior motives."

It might interest you to know that the BBC has already reported weeks
ago that a former Pakistani top diplomat revealed that Washington was
planning IN MID-JULY, long before the terrorist attacks, to invade
Afghanistan ("this fall, before winter"):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1550000/1550366.stm

Whether you think this was a reasonable idea, a bad idea, or somewhere
in between, the fact remains that Bush has an ulterior reason to NOT
want a compromise where Bin Laden is handed over since as we now know
(but has not been very widely reported in the US corporate run media),
he does not want the disappearance of the excuse for the invasion (the
invasion that, we now know, was planned long before 9/11 provided an
excuse for it)

First, Bush's zeal to increase militarism is well known.  His father
put in the military "solution" which has led Saddam stronger than ever
before, caused hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, and it now
appears, because of 10 full years of US military occupation, this not
surprisingly helped inflame anger in that region, the kind of anti-US
anger that the violent extremists feed on.

It there any shred of a doubt that if the evidence was strong, they
would immediately jump at the opportunity to show it to the American
people, rather than hide it from the American people? There is only
one way to find out: the American people need to insist that their
government show them the evidence, rather than have Washington be a
government that hides it from its own people.

"The  Taliban are not interested in compromises"

In fact, the evidence suggests that it is quite real: the Taliban 
would much rather hand over Bin Laden than be destroyed. But there
hasn't been a single country in the history of the world which was
willing to hand over someone else on an Ultimatum, with ZERO evidence
of their guilt, to another country.

Bush claims they have a good deal of evidence.  If they have such
great evidence (which they have been hiding from the American people,
but behind closed doors, we have been told, have shared it with
European leaders), then it should be all that much easier to show the
Taliban -- better yet, show the whole world, that evidence.

Why are our (presumably "elected") leaders, in our democracy, so
desperately insistent that they NOT show us, the American People,
their evidence?  Could it be that they fear we, the American People,
might not find it that convincing?

It there any shred of a doubt that if the evidence was strong, they
would immediately RUSH to show it to the American people?

Again, there is a very easy way to find out, very, very quickly,
whether the Taliban offer is serious: force them to show whether
they are serious by putting the evidence on the table and suggesting a
fair, neutral third country for them to hand Bin Laden to.

4) Bin Laden is the mastermind.

The credible reports from those who know about the region, like
Robert Fisk of the London Independent who has lived in the region
for years and has even met Bin Laden, is that what is called 
"Bin Laden's network", Al Qaeda  is very decentralized, and Bin Laden
hasn't access to international phones, or to fax, or to the
internet, etc.

It is still conceivable that Bin-Laden himself was
behind the 9/11 attacks despite his isolation and 
even despite the highly decentralized nature of  Al Qaeda.

What there can be little doubt of, however, is that
given this decentralized nature, the attacks could have taken
place without Bin Laden (whether  we confirm that they did take
place without his finger pressing a red button, or not..)
and that therefore, the emphasis on one single man is 
very misleading.

And if we want to prevent terrorism and deaths, it is
immoral to pursue a path that is so misleading as to 
minimize our chances of success. Could it be that
this focus is because US leaders have always used 
"devils" to scare and control the American people, and
that a decentralized network isn't as convenient a "devil" as one man
(after all, a devil needs a face, and one man has a face, while a
decentralized network does not).

Could it be that this focus on one man also is a
convenient way to avoid unpleasant questions, such as how
our own CIA used our own tax dollars to help set up, 
fund, and train the Taliban, with terrorism "how to" training as part
of that package? Besides the hijackers who killed themselves along with
their victims, there are surely others who bear responsibility. I hope
we find those others. But we need to go after those, right here, who
funded, helped, and trained the Taliban. First, because it's morally
necessary not to turn a blind eye to some while only going after
others, who helped them.

But secondly, because morally we must do what will make the biggest
difference to preventing terrorism. That our own role increasing
terrorism is a huge one is obvious: how much would you pay for a magic
button that, if pressed, let you go back in time and prevent eh
funding and training we gave the Taliban that let them grow in power,
and from which a still more extreme minority, Al Qaeda, could emerge?