In the wake of the November 13 ousting of the Taliban regime from Kabul by Northern Alliance troops aligned with the exiled government of Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, a number of groups involved in the anti-war movement in Australia have called for the United Nations to "keep peace" in Afghanistan.
A statement issued in Sydney by Friends of the Earth (FoE) — which was also endorsed by the Australian Peace Committee, People for Nuclear Disarmament (WA), the Trade Union Green Caucus, the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign and the Campaign for International Cooperation and Disarmament — declares that these groups "believe it is vital that [Afghanistan] be supervised and reconstructed by the UN with the objective of bringing about a peaceful and just solution to the root problems that led to the rule of the Taliban".
Supporters of peace and democracy should have no objection to a call for the UN to cooperate with the Rabbani government — which has been recognised by the UN since 1992 as the legitimate government of Afghanistan — in providing the people of Afghanistan with massive aid for reconstruction and immediate humanitarian relief.
However, the position put by the six peace and environment groups goes far beyond this. It amounts to the demand that UN — contrary to its own charter — ignore the democratic right of the Afghan people to organise their national affairs free of any foreign interference and place them under a UN-imposed administration.
Such a position is an unfortunate echo of the push by some of the most outspoken supporters of US imperialism's "war on terrorism" to have the United Nations become the civil service for a revived colonialism by the Western powers.
British foreign secretary Jack Straw has publicly raised the possibility of much-expanded UN intervention in what he terms "failed states" — and columnists in the Wall Street Journal and the London Financial Times have positively advocated such a step.
The idea's backers alone should be enough to make supporters of peace and democracy wary.
Furthermore, the reinstalled Rabbani government and the commanders of the military forces supporting it are unlikely to willingly hand over to UN bureaucrats the power they have just taken from the Taliban on the battlefield.
Consequently, any unilateral attempt by the UN to place Afghanistan under its "supervision" could only be accomplished through the military occupation of the country by a large invasion force (which would inevitably be dominated and directed by the United States).
Far from "bringing about a peaceful and just solution to the root problems that led to rule of the Taliban", as the peace and environment groups' statement suggests, any attempt to establish direct UN "supervision" would simply perpetuate the cycle of war and injustice that the Afghan people have had to suffer for the last 23 years — ever since the Western powers, led by the US, began their drive to reimpose a compliant, stable pro-Western government upon the country.
From Green Left Weekly, November 28, 2001.
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