Kilde: Tricontinental
After twenty years, the United States government – and the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – will depart from Afghanistan. They said that they came to do two things: to destroy al-Qaeda, which had launched an attack on the United States on 11 September 2001, and to destroy the Taliban, which had given al-Qaeda a base. After great loss of life and the further destruction of Afghan society, the US departs – as it did from Vietnam in 1975 – in defeat: al-Qaeda has regrouped in different parts of the world, and the Taliban is set to return to the capital, Kabul.
Formanden for Afghanistans parlament, Mir Rahman Rahmani, advarer at landet er klar til at gå ind i en ny periode med borgerkrig, en gentagelse af den frygtelige borgerkrig, der løb fra 1992 til 2001. De Forenede Nationer beregner that in the first quarter of 2021, civilian casualties rose by 29% compared to last year, while the number of women casualties increased by 37%. It is unclear if there will be further talks between the Taliban, the Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani, the Turks, the Qataris, the United States, and the United Nations. Afghanistan sits on the brink of further violence, whose impact can so aptly be described by the words of the poet Zarlasht Hafeez:
Sorgen og sorgen, disse sorte aftener,
Øjne fulde af tårer og tider fulde af sorg,
Disse brændte hjerter, drabet på unge,
Disse uopfyldte forventninger og uopfyldte håb hos brude
‘Saving’ Afghan women, advancing the cause of human rights: these words have lost meaning after two decades. As Eduardo Galeano put it, ‘Every time the US “saves” a country, it converts it either into a madhouse or a cemetery’.
The US government calculates that this war, which would enter its twentieth year, is the longest US war in the modern period (the US engagement in Vietnam lasted for fourteen years, from 1961 to 1975). But this war in Afghanistan is not the longest war prosecuted by the United States government. There are two US wars that continue: a war against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK (since August 1950) and against Cuba (since September 1959). Neither of these conflicts have ended, with the US continuing to execute hybrid wars against both the DPRK and Cuba. A hybrid krig does not necessarily require the full arsenal of a military to come into force; it is a war fought through the control of information and financial flows as well as the use of economic sanctions and illicit means such as sabotage. There is no question that the longest and unfinished US wars have been against Korea and Cuba.
Sixty years ago, on 17 April 1961, the CIA’s Brigade 2506 landed at Cuba’s Playa Girón (‘Bay of Pigs’). The Cuban people resisted this invasion as they would six decades of hybrid war against their sovereign revolutionary processes. Cuba has never threatened the United States; it never has violated the UN Charter of 1945. The United States, on the other hand, has routinely threatened the Cuban people. In October 1962, when the Soviets sent a missile cover to protect Cuba, General Maxwell Taylor, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, planlagt for a full-scale invasion. In this now-declassified memorandum, Taylor pointed out that such a military venture might result in 18,500 casualties on the US side because of the determination of the Cubans to protect their land and their political project. The plot was to reinstate the old Cuban oligarchy that had sought refuge in Miami and turn Cuba back into a gangster’s paradise.
After the Cuban government sent troops to assist the national liberation project in Angola in November 1975, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger fortalt his team on 24 March 1976, ‘if we decide to use military power, it must succeed. There should be no halfway measures – we would get no award for using military power in moderation. If we decide on a blockade, it must be ruthless, rapid, and efficient’. The US planned to mine Havana’s harbour and bomb Cuba’s cities. ‘I think we are going to have to smash Castro’, Kissinger fortalt US President Gerald Ford. Ford replied, ‘I agree’. Such is the attitude of the US government, from 1961 to the present.
Before he left office in January 2021, US President Donald Trump placeret Cuba on the US government’s ‘state sponsors of terrorism’ list. Seventy-five US lawmakers spurgte his successor, President Joe Biden, to reverse this decision. On 16 April, Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki fortalt the briefing room that ‘A Cuba policy shift or additional steps is currently not among the President’s top foreign policy priorities’. Biden, in other words, has decided to passively continue Trump’s policy, dictated to him by the likes of Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott from Florida and Senator Ted Cruz from Texas (as well as Democratic Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey). Biden has opted to persist in this cruel six-decade long policy to suffocate the Cuban people.
Just after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the US government made it clear that it would not tolerate a sovereign Cuba only 145 kilometres from Florida’s coast. Cuba’s commitment to people over profit is a standing rebuke of the hypocrisies of the United States rulers. This has been clarified once more during this pandemic, during which the infection and death rates per million are strikingly higher in the US than in Cuba (recent figures angiver the US has recorded 1,724 deaths per million, whereas Cuba stands at 47 deaths per million). While the US locked itself into vaccine nationalism, Cuba’s Henry Reeve Brigade of doctors continued with their work amongst the world’s poorest people (for this, of course, they fortjener Nobelprisen for fred).
Unable to successfully invade Cuba, the US has persisted with a tight blockade of the island. After the fall of the USSR, which had provided Cuba with ways to circumvent the blockade, the US attempted to tighten its grip on the island. US lawmakers then attacked Cuba’s economy through the Cuban Democracy Act (1992) and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (1996) – both laws with names that demean the words in them. From 1992 onwards, the UN General Assembly has stemte overvældende for USA at afslutte denne blokade. En gruppe af FN's Menneskerettighedsråds særlige rapportører skrev en erklæring calling on the US to withdraw these measures, which have only made Cuba’s attempt to fight the pandemic harder.
Den cubanske regering rapporteret that between April 2019 and March 2020, Cuba lost $5 billion in potential trade due to the blockade; over the past almost six decades, it has lost the equivalent of $144 billion. Now the US government has deepened the sanctions against shipping companies that bring oil to the island. The head of US Southern Command, Admiral Craig Faller, beskrevet Cuba’s medical internationalism as a ‘regional corrosive influence’. There is cruelty in Washington.
Far from the bitterness of the US government, the Cuban communists held their eighth Party Congress, where the diskussion handlede om, hvordan man kan forbedre statsvirksomhederne, og hvordan man kan innovere for at imødekomme det cubanske folks forhåbninger. Vicepremierminister Inés María Chapman sagde, at partimedlemmerne skal være aktive i deres lokalsamfund for at opbygge og forsvare socialismen. Rafael Santiesteban Pozo, formand for National Association of Small Farmers, sagde, at arbejdende mennesker skal producere mere med de ressourcer, der er til rådighed. Økonomi- og planlægningsminister Alejandro Gil pegede på behovet for større effektivitet i statsvirksomhedssystemet, udvidelse af selvstændig virksomhed og udvidelse af kooperativer.
These are serious people who recognise the problems but are not overwhelmed by them; they are part of a project that has fought to defend its sovereignty against enormous odds since 1959. Defeat is not in their vocabulary. Their agenda is hopeful, unlike the bilious agenda that comes from the US government and the Miami-based Cuban oligarchy.
Ved denne kongres trådte Raúl Castro tilbage fra sin post. Castro, en af de oprindelige cubanske revolutionære, var blevet fængslet for sin rolle i Moncada-opstanden i 1953. Efter sin løsladelse tog han til Mexico med sin bror Fidel og vendte derefter tilbage Granma to lead the rebellion against the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. After the victory of the Revolution, Castro served in the government and as a leader in the Communist Party, guiding it alongside Fidel and others through the difficult Special Period (1991-2000) and then continuing to lead it after Fidel’s death in 2016. His quiet role in defending and elaborating the Cuban Revolution has been immense.
After the Playa Girón attack by the CIA, the Spanish poet Jaime Gil de Biedma wrote a poem about Cuba called ‘During the Invasion’ (collected in Moraliteter, 1966). Den venezuelanske digter Diego Sequera oversatte dette digt for os, da vi fejrer de 60.th anniversary of the defeat of the US on those beaches:
Morgenavisen er åben d. kl
dugen. Solen skinner i glassene.
Frokost på den lille restaurant,
en arbejdsdag.De fleste af os forbliver tavse. Nogen taler med en undvigende stemme;
det er samtaler med særlig sorg
om de ting, der altid sker og
som aldrig ender, eller som ender i skændsel.Jeg tror, at på dette tidspunkt af dagen står solen op i Ciénaga;
intet er endnu afgjort, kampen stopper ikke,
og jeg ser i nyhederne efter lidt håb
det kommer ikke fra Miami.Åh, Cuba i det fjerne daggry af troperne,
når solen simrer, og luften er klar:
må dit land så tanke og din ødelagte himmel
være grå fra flyvemaskinernes vinger.Med dig er folket af sukkerrør,
sporvognens mand, dem fra restauranterne,
de tusindvis af os, der i dag søger i verden
for et lille håb, der ikke kommer fra Miami.
Hope comes from the warm sun of Cuba.
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