> >JOHN PILGER: "BIN LADEN EXTRADITION OFFER REFUSED"
> >
> >
> >Date: Friday, 16 November 2001, 8:09 a.m.
> >
> >John Pilger has another article in The Daily Mirror.
> >He has written in this article that Pakistan offered
> >to extradite bin Laden for trial, after holding him
> >under house arrest in Peshawar. Has anybody else heard
> >of this?
> >
> >He has also seen the China connection.
> >
> >THE ARTICLE BELOW SHOULD BE READ FIRST, BEFORE YOU GO
> >TO THE SITE OF THE DAILY MIRROR TO READ ABOUT
> >PAKISTAN'S OFFER.
> >
> >From The Daily Mirror at
> >http://mirror.icnetwork.co.uk/
> >
> >Full John Pilger article at
> >http://mirror.icnetwork.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=11427607&method=full
> >
> >
> >JOHN PILGER: THIS WAR OF LIES GOES ON Legendary
> >foreign correspondent argues the conflict is a sham..
> >not one terrorist has either been caught or killed
> >
> >There is no victory in Afghanistan's tribal war, only
> >the exchange of one group of killers for another. The
> >difference is that President Bush calls the latest
> >occupiers of Kabul "our friends".
> >
> >However welcome the scenes of people playing music and
> >shaving off their beards, this so-called Northern
> >Alliance are no bringers of freedom. They are the same
> >people welcomed by similar scenes of jubilation in
> >1992, who then killed an estimated 50,000 in four
> >years of internecine feuding.
> >
> >The new heroes so far have tortured and executed at
> >least 100 prisoners of war, and countless others, as
> >well as looted food supplies and re-established their
> >monopoly on the heroin trade.
> >
> >This week, Amnesty International made an unusually
> >blunt statement that was buried in the news. It ought
> >to be emblazoned across every front page and
> >television screen. "By failing to appreciate the
> >gravity of the human rights concerns in relation to
> >Northern Alliance leaders," said Amnesty, "UK
> >ministers at best perpetuate a culture of impunity for
> >past crimes; at worst they risk being complicit in
> >human rights abuse."
> >
> >The truth is that the latest crop of criminals to
> >"liberate" Kabul have been given a second chance by
> >the most powerful country on earth pounding into dust
> >one of the poorest, where people's life expectancy is
> >just over 40.
> >
> >And for what?
> >
> >Not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on
> >America has yet to be caught or killed. Osama bin
> >Laden and his network have almost certainly slipped
> >into the tribal areas of the North-West Frontier of
> >Pakistan. Will Pakistan now be bombed? And Saudi
> >Arabia, and Egypt, where Islamic extremism and its
> >military network took root? Of course not.
> >
> >The Saudi sheikhs, many of them as extreme as the
> >Taliban, control America's greatest source of oil. The
> >Egyptian regime, bribed with billions of US dollars,
> >is an important American proxy. No daisy cutters for
> >them.
> >
> >There was, and still is, no "war on terrorism".
> >Instead, we have watched a variation of the great
> >imperial game of swapping "bad" terrorists for "good"
> >terrorists, while untold numbers of innocent people
> >have paid with their lives: most of one village, whole
> >families, a hospital, as well as teenage conscripts
> >suitably dehumanised by the word "Taliban".
> >
> >It is perfectly understandable that those in the West
> >who supported this latest American tenor from the air,
> >or hedged their bets, should now seek to cover the
> >blood on their reputations with absurd claims that
> >"bombing works". Tell that to grieving parents at
> >fresh graves in impoverished places of whom the sofa
> >bomb-aimers know nothing.
> >
> >The contortion of intellect and morality that this
> >triumphalism requires is not a new phenomenon. Putting
> >aside the terminally naive, it mostly comes from those
> >who like to play at war: who have seen nothing of
> >bombing, as I have experienced it: cluster bombs,
> >daisy cutters: the lot.
> >
> >How appropriate that the last American missile to hit
> >Kabul before the "liberators" arrived should destroy
> >the satellite transmitter of the Al-Jazeera television
> >station, virtually the only reliable source of news in
> >the region.
> >
> >For weeks, American officials have been pressuring the
> >government of Qatar, the Gulf state where Al-Jazeera
> >is based, to silence its broadcasters, who have given
> >a view of the "war against terrorism" other than that
> >based on the false premises of the Bush and Blair
> >"crusade".
> >
> >The guilty secret is that the attack on Afghanistan
> >was unnecessary. The "smoking gun" of this entire
> >episode is evidence of the British Government's lies
> >about the basis for the war. According to Tony Blair,
> >it was impossible to secure Osama bin Laden's
> >extradition from Afghanistan by means other than
> >bombing.
> >
> >Yet in late September and early October, leaders of
> >Pakistan's two Islamic parties negotiated bin Laden's
> >extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the
> >September 11 attacks. The deal was that he would be
> >held under house arrest in Peshawar. According to
> >reports in Pakistan (and the Daily Telegraph), this
> >had both bin Laden's approval and that of Mullah Omah,
> >the Taliban leader.
> >
> >The offer was that he would face an international
> >tribunal, which would decide whether to try him or
> >hand him over to America. Either way, he would have
> >been out of Afghanistan, and a tentative justice would
> >be seen to be in progress. It was vetoed by Pakistan's
> >president Musharraf who said he "could not guarantee
> >bin Laden's safety".
> >
> >But who really killed the deal?
> >
> >The US Ambassador to Pakistan was notified in advance
> >of the proposal and the mission to put it to the
> >Taliban. Later, a US official said that "casting our
> >objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse
> >of the international effort if by some luck chance Mr
> >bin Laden was captured".
> >
> >And yet the US and British governments insisted there
> >was no alternative to bombing Afghanistan because the
> >Taliban had "refused" to hand over Osama bin Laden.
> >What the Afghani people got instead was "American
> >justice" - imposed by a president who, as well as
> >denouncing international agreements on nuclear
> >weapons, biological weapons, torture and global
> >warming, has refused to sign up for an international
> >court to try war criminals: the one place where bin
> >Laden might be put on trial.
> >
> >When Tony Blair said this war was not an attack on
> >Islam as such, he was correct.
> >
> >Its aim, in the short term, was to satisfy a domestic
> >audience then to accelerate American influence in a
> >vital region where there has been a power vacuum since
> >the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of
> >China, whose oil needs are expected eventually to
> >surpass even those of the US. That is why control of
> >Central Asia and the Caspian basin oilfields is
> >important as exploration gets under way.
> >
> >There was, until the cluster bombing of innocents, a
> >broad-based recognition that there had to be
> >international action to combat the kind of terrorism
> >that took thousands of lives in New York.
> >
> >But these humane responses to September 11 were
> >appropriated by an American administration, whose
> >subsequent actions ought to have left all but the
> >complicit and the politically blind in no doubt that
> >it intended to reinforce its post-cold war assertion
> >of global supremacy - an assertion that has a long,
> >documented history.
> >
> >The "war on terrorism" gave Bush the pretext to
> >pressure Congress into pushing through laws that erode
> >much of the basis of American justice and democracy.
> >Blair has followed behind with anti-terrorism laws of
> >the very kind that failed to catch a single terrorist
> >during the Irish war.
> >
> >In this atmosphere of draconian controls and fear, in
> >the US and Britain, mere explanation of the root
> >causes of the attacks on America invites ludicrous
> >accusations of "treachery."
> >
> >Above all, what this false victory has demonstrated is
> >that, to those in power in Washington and London and
> >those who speak for them, certain human lives have
> >greater worth than others and that the killing of only
> >one set of civilians is a crime. If we accept that, we
> >beckon the repetition of atrocities on all sides,
> >again and again.