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October 22-26, 2001 - Global Policy Forum - Email 'Listserv' News
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October 22-26, 2001Greetings from Global Policy Forum!
War
The United States war in Afghanistan continued this week, as commando raids on the ground joined round-the-clock air strikes. Friday, October 26, marked the war's 19th day.
Correspondents in Afghanistan report that US air strikes have hit several warehouses of the Red Cross, at least two mosques, a hospital, a school, and other public buildings and homes throughout the country. US pilots are reportedly now authorized to fire "at will" (without prior authorization) at anything within certain designated areas known as "kill boxes." The United States is making regular use of cluster bombs, weapons that many consider extremely cruel and contrary to international human rights and humanitarian law.
The bombings are forcing urban populations to flee into the mine-sown countryside, where they are faced with serious difficulties of survival, especially as winter approaches. Humanitarian organizations continue to express concern for the 6-7 million Afghans who depend on international food supplies. Some food shipments may be getting through, but the bombing has apparently halted most transport, leaving emergency food supplies dangerously low.
According to an October 26 report in the Boston Globe, US bombers attacked Chowker Khola village on the outskirts of Heart earlier in the week, destroying a mosque and a military hospital. The Globe cites UN reports that unexploded submunitions from cluster bombs were so thinckly strewn in residential areas in Chowker Khola that people were afraid to leave their homes. UN specialist demining teams rushed to the village, but were unable to disarm the weapons, which are of a new and classified type.
The cluster bombs, reliably identified as the CBU-87/B, scatter 202 bright yellow "bomblets" in a wide area. These bomblets explode into about 300 fragments that are capable of disabling light armored vehicles and inflicting extremely painful death on humans. After the initial explosion, dozens of these bomblets typically lie in an unexploded state, functioning as de facto landmines, with lethal effects on people living in the area.
For all the increasing ferocity of the air attacks, results have disappointed US military planners. In testimony to Congress on October 25, Rear Admiral John D. Stufflebeem, Deputy Operations Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Taliban soldiers ''are proving to be tough warriors.'' He predicted that there would be no quick victory. Rather, he said, the war may go on for many months. His testimony explodes the myth that fighting will be over by the beginning of Ramadan in mid-November, in time for the delivery of food supplies before the worst of the Afghan winter sets in.
Stiglitz Page on GPF Site
We have created a new page about Joseph Stiglitz on the GPF web site. Stiglitz, who recently was announced as this year's Nobel Prize winner for economics, is one of the liveliest thinkers in the economics profession. On the page we have assembled a number of articles about Stiglitz' stormy exit from his post as Chief Economist of the World Bank as well as other materials such as media interviews and Stiglitz' own papers. This page will join another new page which posts information on the resignation of Cornell economist Ravi Kanbur, lead author of the Bank's censored report on poverty. Eventually, we expect to have an entire section featuring insiders who have criticized the Bank and the Fund and the neo-liberal dogma they espouse.
Of particular interest is a recent Stiglitz interview with Greg Palast of the Observer (London). According to the World Bank, its Assistance Strategy for a poorer country is "designed after careful in-country investigation." Palast quotes Stiglitz as saying that the "careful investigation" consists of "close inspection of a nation's 5-star hotels." Stiglitz goes on to say that after the "investigation," the Bank hands the Finance Minister of every poor country exactly the same 4-step program. Step 1 is privatisation, especially of electricity and water (often involving bribery of national officials), step 2 is capital market liberalisation (that allows foreign speculators to drain national treasuries), step 3 is market-based pricing that results in riots due to higher prices for food, cooking fuel and water, and step 4 is free trade - WTO style, that Stiglitz likens to the 19th century Opium Wars. Stiglitz says he despairs that the World Bank and IMF will ever change their failed policies. [Our thanks to Public Services International for this lively summary]
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