We've had enough of easy apologies

Nato's intervention has made the situation worse since 2001, with bombings and deaths on a daily basis, and widespread disillusion caused by the license given to warlords. This has embittered social and human relations. No change of tactics can cancel western deeds from the minds of Afghans: firing on weddings, murdering civilians during celebrations,protecting the corrupt mafiosi who fill the government of Karzai. di cui s’è riempito il governo Karzai.

Samia Walid, member of RAWA (Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan

On 18 may, at Taloquan in the north of Afghanistan, 12 civilians were killed and at least 80 injured during a protest provoked by the latest killing of civilians - two women and two men - in a night raid by US special forces.

This is the fourth "incident" of the kind in a week. On 16 May, NATO forces killed a 10 year old girl and injured another 4 children in the eastern province of Kunar. On the 14th they killed a 15 year old boy during a night raid in the Nangarhar province. On the 12th, in the same zone, another night raid caused the death of a 12 year old girl and her uncle, a policeman.

NATO forces are currently carrying out around 600 raids every month. The raids have produced horrific crimes, including the killing of children. In one case, last year, soliders dug the bullets out of the bodies of two pregnant women to conceal their responsibility for the killings.

When it isn't possible to hide their responsibility, the NATO leaders offer apologies. But these apologies come too easily. The bitter message for the families of victims is that their loved ones are collateral damage - a price that must be paid.

We ask those who still believe that NATO has a positive role to perform in Afghanistan - to prevent civil war or to improve the situation of women - to reflect on how they would feel if it were their own loved ones who were killed with such unconcern.

We are not ingenuous. We don't believe that the withdrawal of foreign troops will immediately bring about peace in Afghanistan. But we do believe that the presence of NATO troops is part of the problem, not the solution. Apart from the violence committed y NATO soldiers, the policy of creating alliances with fundamentalist groups and with warlords favours the use of armed force as a political strategy and makes the struggle of civil society more difficult.

Some people shrug their shoulders and say that warlords are part of the Afghan reality, a problem of the Afghan culture. We reply that warlords are a part of the Afghan reality, because it is a land that has been at war for decades. Warlords are not a part of the Afghan culture, they are a part of the culture of militarisation - which the presence of NATO forces can only reinforce.

Finally, we turn to the words of Samia Walid in an interview during her current visit to Italy:



Foreign forces must leave the country. A civil war could not be worse than what is happening now. It will be up to the people to decide their fate and if the resistance to fundamentalist revives, we will be with the women and men who want to build their own country.