Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madison Area Peace Coalition E-mails Description An account of the resource The Madison Area Peace Coalition (MAPC) formed fourteen days after the September 11 attacks to oppose (among other goals) the use of U.S. military, economic, or political force – whether direct or proxy, overt or covert -- "that violates the sovereignty or human rights of any nation or people." The Archive has assembled here e-mails exchanges from MAPC dating from the group's founding until late November 2001. September 11 Email September 11 Email: Body The basic content, as unstructured text; sometimes containing a signature block at the end. On Friday, November 16 at 12 noon-1 pm on WORT's A Public Affair, Zoltan Grossman will again have as his guest Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent of The Independent (London).  Fisk's war dispatches from Islamabad, Pakistan , can be seen at http://www.independent.co.uk . The interview will take place live from Beirut. Robert Fisk was the first western journalist to interview Osama Bin Laden, and one of the first to warn of the consequences of the West's tilt toward Islamist militants in the region.  Fisk's harsh assessment of the new/old rulers of Kabul, the Northern Alliance, can be seen below, as can a similar new statement from the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). Tune in to 89.9fm, and call 256-2001 on Friday to ask questions. ++++++++++++++++ Published on Tuesday, November 13, 2001 in the Independent/UK No Surprise at Rumors of New Atrocities by Our 'Foot-Soldiers' by Robert Fisk The Northern Alliance's sudden victories in Afghanistan may be good news for the West but the bad news is not far behind. The Uzbek, Tadjik and Hazara gunmen who make up this rag-tag army have a bloody reputation for torturing and executing prisoners which ? if resumed in the coming days ? will plunge America and Britain into a moral abyss. Chilling stories of more than 100 pro-Taliban Pakistani fighters shot dead after their surrender in Mazar-i-Sharif ? and of Alliance gunmen "roaming the streets'' of the abandoned city ? will not come as a surprise to those who are aware of the atrocities committed by America's new allies during the 1992-96 fighting in Kabul. For the Americans ? and for the minuscule British component of the West's military forces inside Afghanistan ? the behavior of the Northern Alliance presents a grave problem. As our "foot-soldiers" are in Afghanistan, we cannot disclaim responsibility for human rights abuses by the Alliance's gunmen; yet neither the Americans nor the British appear to have tried to control the army they are now helping. Indeed, it seems they may not even be able to prevent the Alliance from entering Kabul. The massacres committed by malicious fighting in the name of outside powers have regularly brought shame upon their more powerful allies. The Contras in Nicaragua and the Phalangist militiamen in Lebanon contaminated their respective American and Israeli masters ? the latter in the notorious Palestinian camp massacres of Sabra and Chatila in 1982. A glance at the Alliance's track record of rape, pillage and street executions in Kabul between 1992 and 1996 suggests that the so-called Allies ? America, Britain and just about anyone else who wants to join in ? have good reason to exert their influence over the newly victorious militiamen from the north of Afghanistan. In Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat there are comparatively few Pashtun communities, which traditionally favor the Taliban. A bit further south the Alliance will find itself among its ethnic enemies. In 1997, Mazar's Hazara defenders killed more than 600 Taliban militiamen who had taken over the city and then massacred dozens of Pakistani students who had accompanied the Taliban into the region. In later bloodbaths, thousands of Taliban prisoners were shot into mass graves, with dozens more Pakistanis. A Northern Alliance turncoat, General Pahlawan Malik, subsequently executed 2,000 Taliban prisoners of war who had been tortured and starved before being put to death. Many were drowned in wells. Others met a more carefully planned death. One of General Malik's generals recalled: "At night when it was quiet and dark we took about 150 Taliban prisoners, blindfolded them, tied their hands behind their backs and drove them in truck containers out to the desert. We lined them up 10 at a time, in front of holes in the ground, and opened fire. It took about six nights.'' On other occasions Taliban prisoners were locked inside containers in mid-summer; 1,250 were deliberately asphyxiated in this way, their corpses dragged from the containers, blackened by the heat. Could it happen again? There is no reason to believe the Alliance has been taking lessons in human rights. It has been receiving ammunition from Russia and logistics from the United States. Photographs in yesterday's Pakistani papers showed Alliance gunmen leading a small party of Western troops through the terrain of northern Afghanistan. But our soldiers are highly unlikely to have been distributing copies of the Geneva Convention to their new friends. ++++++++++ Robert Fisk: Our friends are killers, crooks and torturers 07 October 2001 The Independent (London) www.independent.co.uk Almost four weeks after the crimes against humanity in New York and Washington, we are playing politics on the hoof and allying ourselves to some of the nastiest butchers around. Mr Blair may believe that "the values we believe in should shine through what we do in Afghanistan" but few of our "friends" in the region have many values, and some of them have a lot of blood on their hands. For as we search for facilities and jumping-off points and air space and access -- and we are now creating policies by the day -- we are being asked to forget a lot of recent history. First out of the memory goes Chechnya. The savage repression of this Muslim republic -- complete with mass executions, mass rape and mass graves -- was the brainchild of Vladimir Putin, the former serving KGB officer into whose soul Mr Bush believes he peered in Slovenia. Mr Putin's assault on Grozny was timed to bring him the Russian presidency, and within weeks his indisciplined troops had turned the rubble of Chechnya into something approaching Afghanistan. Mr Putin now seems our strongest ally in the "war against terror". And why not, when he is himself such a master of terror? Second out of the memory goes the nasty little dictatorship run by the Saudi royal family whose religious "mouttawa" police taught the Taliban how to run their Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue. We should forget that women are not even allowed to drive a car in Saudi Arabia, we must ignore the weekly head-choppings outside mosques, the country's disgraceful and unfair judicial system -- everything, in fact, which might remind us of Saudi Arabia's carbon copy, the Taliban, whose destruction we are now seeking. Then we must turn our attention away from the not terribly democratic regime of General Pervez Musharraf. Only a little while ago, the general was the Pakistani army commander who overthrew the democratically elected -- though corrupt -- government of Nawaz Sharif. Indeed, General Musharraf was rather keen to hang Mr Sharif until President Clinton dropped by Islamabad early last year to condemn Osama bin Laden and appeal for Sharif's life. Only a few weeks ago, the general appointed himself president. And while the world tut-tutted then, it now respectfully accords General Musharraf the title of "president" too. Fourth down the memory hole goes our new friend Uzbekistan whose President Islam Karimov currently holds 7,000 political prisoners in his jails. There is no free press, no political opposition. Mikhail Ardzinov, one of the few human rights activists in Uzbekistan -- who was brutally beaten by Karimov's secret police two years ago -- now says that although America had promised not to sell out human rights to get Karimov's friendship, "We know that the tone will change now". Too true. Karimov has promised that his air space can be "used in the fight against terrorism for humanitarian and security aims". And this is not the moment to remind anyone that Uzbekistan has its own reasons to destroy the Taliban -- not just because the Taliban has been exporting its revolution over the Afghan-Uzbek border, but because President Karimov wants to run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to a Pakistani port, a project that will help to fund his bankrupt police state (as well as a few American oil companies). One of Karimov's allies is the anti-Taliban war criminal Abdul Rashid Dustum whose men went on a rampage of rape in Kabul in the early Nineties and who, for several months, went to fight for the Taliban after receiving a massive bribe for his change of allegiance. So it's amnesia too for the anarchy and mass human rights abuses perpetrated when the Northern Alliance -- our friends in northern Afghanistan -- ruled Kabul. We must remember with sorrow its former leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, a genuine patriot murdered by Arab suicide bombers on 9 September, but we must forget his colleague Rasoul Sayaf whose men used Shia women as sex slaves in the early Nineties. Now it's true that Churchill, when told in 1941 that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union and that Stalin was now his ally, announced that if Hitler invaded Hell, he would at least make "a favourable reference" to the Devil in the House of Commons. But we're not making any references at all to our "friends" in the region. We have drawn the shining bright sword and have no time to worry if the hands we shake are covered in blood. This is a war of democracy versus evil, according to President Bush. It's just that there's not an awful lot of democracy around. +++++++++++ >Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) >RAWA's appeal to the UN and World community > >The people of Afghanistan do not accept domination of the Northern >Alliance! > >Now it is confirmed that the Taliban have left Kabul and the Northern >Alliance has entered the city. > >The world should understand that the Northern Alliance is composed of some >bands who did show their real criminal and inhuman nature when they were >ruling Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996. > >The retreat of the terrorist Taliban from Kabul is a positive development, >but entering of the rapist and looter NA in the city is nothing but a >dreadful and shocking news for about 2 million residents of Kabul whose >wounds of the years 1992-96 have not healed yet. > >Thousands of people who fled Kabul during the past two months were saying >that they feared coming to power of the NA in Kabul much more than being >scared by the US bombing. > >The Taliban and Al-Qaeda will be eliminated, but the existence of the NA as >a military force would shatter the joyful dream of the majority for an >Afghanistan free from the odious chains of barbaric Taliban. The NA will >horribly intensify the ethnic and religious conflicts and will never >refrain >to fan the fire of another brutal and endless civil war in order to retain >in power. The terrible news of looting and inhuman massacre of the captured >Taliban or their foreign accomplices in Mazar-e-Sharif in past few days >speaks for itself. > >Though the NA has learned how to pose sometimes before the West as >"democratic" and even supporter of women's rights, but in fact they have >not >at all changed, as a leopard cannot change its spots. > >RAWA has already documented heinous crimes of the NA. Time is running out. >RAWA on its own part appeals to the UN and world community as a whole to >pay >urgent and considerable heed to the recent developments in our ill-fated >Afghanistan before it is too late. > >We would like to emphatically ask the UN to send its effective >peace-keeping >force into the country before the NA can repeat the unforgettable crimes >they committed in the said years. > >The UN should withdraw its recognition to the so-called Islamic government >headed by Rabbani and help the establishment of a broad-based government >based on the democratic values. > >RAWA's call stems from the aspirations of the vast majority of the people >of >Afghanistan. > >Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) > _______________________________________________ discuss@madpeace.org mailing list http://lists.OpenSoftwareServices.com/mailman/listinfo/madpeace-discuss September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. Thursday, November 15, 2001 11:20 AM September 11 Email: To The email addresses, and optionally names of the message's recipients discuss@madpeace.org September 11 Email: From The email address, and optionally the name of the author. X September 11 Email: CC The email addresses of those who received the message addressed primarily to another. NULL September 11 Email: Subject A brief summary of the topic of the message. [MAPC-discuss] WORT Fri. noon: X on the continuing Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [MAPC-discuss] WORT Fri. noon: X on the continuing 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. unknown Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. email Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2001-11-15