A rchive Date
[ 23-02-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
|
[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/worthington.html
C'mon Eric, get it right!
Worthington takes on our global affairs pundit
By PETER WORTHINGTON - Toronto Sun
December 27, 2001
When events in the Balkans made daily headlines in the early and mid-1990s, readers of the Toronto Sun were treated to conflicting interpretations of events there.
Local Croats saw Bob MacDonald as the source of all virtue by his writings that favoured Croatia; Muslims thought Eric Margolis was the voice of enlightenment; Serbs realized I had the only true, informed, impartial understanding. Our diverse views were civilized - barely. But readers had an interesting choice - coincidental rather than deliberate.
Eric and I tend to see some things differently. For example, at the start in the Gulf war I thought the Iraqi military would fall apart. If it didn't, it meant the billions the U.S. had spent on its military was wasted.
Eric thought Saddam Hussein's "battle-hardened army is professional and fairly competent" (Oct. 21, 1990) and "the coalition will probably suffer 10,000-15,000 casualties" (Jan. 13, 1991). (The U.S. had 148 killed in action.)
We disagreed over the Kosovo air war, and I suppose the jury is out on whether Albanian thugs are an improvement on Serbian thugs. Ask Macedonians, whose country is now threatened by Albanian insurgents.
Now to President George Bush's war against terrorism in Afghanistan.
Watching Margolis on CNN panel discussions with Wolf Blitzer and Greta van Susteren, it's hard to reconcile what seems a growing anti-Americanism in his outlook. Maybe he's playing devil's advocate, but I can't understand why he would find the "coincidence" of the Osama bin Laden videotape suspicious, and perhaps fabricated by the U.S.
"As a journalist I'm always skeptical," he told Blitzer, while Saudi Arabia's chief foreign adviser, Adel al-Jubeir, fumed that the tapes were obviously genuine and offensive.
To me, it's inconceivable the U.S. would fabricate this, but we'll learn soon enough if the "skepticism" of Margolis and many Muslims is warranted.
Where Eric really missed the boat was his analyses after Sept. 11, when he predicted high casualties for the U.S which had "no master plan" against Afghanistan's "renowned" fighters (Sept. 15). He anticipated U.S. forces "will find themselves in the midst of a hostile population which sees them as invaders" (Sept. 23).
'No plan of action'
Eric reiterated that the U.S. "charged into Afghanistan with no plan of action", and that Afghans "flocked to join the Taliban." He dismissed the Northern Alliance as "a motley, Russian-created force of former communists, opium dealers, bandits and un-warlike tribesmen (who) struck ferocious poses for gullible western TV teams, but failed to advance an inch" (Oct. 28).
Immediately after that column, Mazur-e-Sharif and Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance, and the rest is history.
Eric then wrote that "the Taliban retreat was inevitable" and that the "U.S. military plan for Afghanistan is on schedule" (Nov. 18).
He has since called Afghanistan "a jolly little war against Muslims" by the U.S., but considers it a "humiliating defeat at the hands of the wily Russians." The "unworldly" President Bush has been hornswoggled by Vladimir Putin: "Russia now dominates Afghanistan" (Dec. 2).
Eric notes in passing that the former Afghan communist regime offered "$50,000 to Afridi tribesmen around the Khyber pass to capture me ... " (Nov. 4) but doesn't say why.
Most puzzling is Eric's insistence that the Taliban banned poppy growing and opium smuggling, which he says is now the domain of the Northern Alliance.
Eric, who subscribes to a lot of esoteric intelligence data, should know that in five of the six years of Taliban rule, opium smuggling was a prime source of income. The U.S. State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics, the UN and other sources note that until its ban last year, the Taliban collected 20% taxes on poppy fields, and set up refineries for the production and marketing of heroin, which is more profitable.
The UN estimated that in 1999 the value of the Afghan opium crop was $265 million, of which $40 million went to the Taliban in taxes. The ban on cultivating poppies in 2000 supposedly eliminated two-thirds of the world's annual illicit opium supply, forcing the price up tenfold. Yet the flow of opiates from Afghanistan didn't abate - which indicates stockpiled opium was still being exported.
The UN drug control program estimates 60% of Afghanistan's annual production of some 2,700 metric tons of opiates in heroin were stockpiled every year by the Taliban, which may explain the continuing flow at a higher price.
The definitive book on the Afghan drug trade is Taliban by Ahmed Rashid. It estimates $10 billion worth of heroin a year flowed out of Afghanistan, which now affects locals as well as western infidels. In 1979 there were virtually no heroin addicts in Pakistan; by the mid-'80s there were 600,000; by 1992, three million addicts, and five million by 1999 - with most heroin coming from Afghanistan.
Opium continued
When the Taliban banned the growing of opium because it was against the will of Allah, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell rewarded Mad Mullah Omar with $43 million to offset the loss in opium taxes. Sadly, the opium kept flowing.
For more, consult the Internet (www.google.com and search for "opium Taliban") and you'll find scads of material.
This raises the question of why Margolis keeps citing the Taliban's brief ban on poppy growing and opium smuggling - which at one point had Iran on the verge of a border war. Some 3,000 of Iran's anti-smuggling officers have been killed in recent years. Is Eric too trusting of Pakistani sources for information?
Those of us who write about current affairs and make predictions should stand or fall on the correctness of our analyses and assessments. It can be a risky business, like predicting winners of sporting events, only more serious.
Eric's empathy with Muslim causes may colour his judgment and make him appear hostile to America as well as Russia and Israel - a curious combination of dislikes.
As a "skeptical journalist," his writings on some subjects don't stand up well. He does a disservice to his cause and himself.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA))]
|