Black Alliance for Peace analysis on Afghanistan, Haiti and the U.S. effort to maintain hegemony.
Some have asserted the U.S. empire has reached its historic endpoint because of its defeat in Afghanistan. However, that call is as premature as political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s proclamation that history had "ended" in 1989 when Western liberalism won because the former Soviet Union was coming apart.
Afghanistan might have been the so-called “graveyard of empires” and of certain states at other points in history. But the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan had occurred years earlier, a fact verified by revelations found in the “Afghanistan Papers.” That defeat had no appreciative impact on U.S. foreign-policy makers, who continued their destructive path in places like Yemen, Libya and Syria. Only a handful of the U.S. population was still interested in continuing a war in Afghanistan up until the last week or so. But the rulers did not inform the U.S. public, so the masses did not know the war had been lost.
This point is important because one of the lessons that should be taken from understanding that the United States had squandered $2 trillion, murdered 500,000 Afghans, sacrificed 2,300 U.S. service members from the U.S. working class and wounded over 20,000 U.S. military personnel is the public finally understands these wars only benefit the ruling class and have nothing to do with the interests of the vast majority of the people.
Despite this new awareness, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) warned in its latest Afghanistan News Update:
“While all eyes are on Afghanistan, the United States continues its other wars of aggression across the world, claiming to “fight terrorism”—the same excuse it used to invade Afghanistan 20 years ago. Biden recently authorized air strikes on Somalia, more U.S. Special Forces recently have moved into the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the United States is continuing its mission to further destabilize the Horn of Africa by pushing for so-called "humanitarian intervention" in Ethiopia. That country has been added to the nearly 40 that are under some form of deadly U.S. sanctions that deprive countries of food, fuel, and medicine. Meanwhile, the United States remains entrenched in Iraq, reportedly expanding its Ain al-Asad base despite calls for its withdrawal. All this while it claims to be withdrawing its combat forces from Iraq. Over in Syria, the United States continues the destabilization effort, as well as stealing Syrian resources. Meanwhile, Haiti struggles to effectively respond to yet another natural disaster because of the more than a century’s worth of U.S./Western imperialist aggression.”
As indicated above, while the earthquake in Haiti occurred right in the middle of the U.S.-made drama in Afghanistan, the disaster in Haiti is both a natural disaster and a human-made disaster that requires special mention.
After the devastating 2010 earthquake, billions of dollars flowed into Haiti to support reconstruction. Most of that money flowed right back out. More money went to the Washington Beltway and to the salaries and infrastructure of aid organizations than to reconstruction. Haitian organizations, and the Haitian state, were almost completely bypassed. In keeping with the nefarious logic of disaster capitalism, the so-called “poorest country in the hemisphere”—also known as “The Republic of NGOs”—made certain people rich. For example, the small local oligarchy, with properties to lease and businesses to serve foreigners, benefited. Meanwhile, the crisis in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake was used to cover imperialism’s expansion: The United States and the “Core Group” of Germany, Canada, Spain and a vassal state—Brazil—as well as the Organization of American States (OAS) were able to consolidate their power through the installation of neo-Duvalierist Michel Martelly and the Bald-Headed Party (PHTK).
Will history repeat itself in the wake of the latest earthquake?
Haiti, Afghanistan, Syria, mass incarceration in the United States, and illegal sanctions and corporate press agitation for more aggressive positions on China (simply because China is in the process of defeating Western capital at its own game) all demonstrate the repressive and lethal reality: The Pan-European colonial-capitalist white-supremacist patriarchy is not going to go away quietly. It must be decisively defeated if global humanity is to survive in a way that allows for the potential for real democracy and social justice. The work reflected in this newsletter reflects BAP’s commitment to that historic task.
This article is a reprint of the August 23, 2021 Black Alliance for Peace newsletter.
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Ajamu Baraka is a Black Agenda Report contributing editor and director of the North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights, a project of the Black Alliance for Peace. He recently…
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