Uncle Sam creates refugees and then brags how they want to live in the united $tates by MC5, November 23, 2001 The UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) says there are 1 million displaced people within Afghanistan, 1.5 million in Iran and 2 million in Pakistan. Each day it appears that thousands move one way or another.(1) Right now millions of refugees can be thankful that the U.$. backed side of the war is winning, and holding Kabul, because otherwise, the United $tates was planning to let millions starve to death this winter. The master of genocide only allows common decency in victory. Millions of refugees, mostly Pashtun or Taliban-related refugees may not do so well as those who are cheering the departure of the Taliban. In any case, MIM's platform calls for international price supports for food prices, paid for by the populations of the United $tates and other imperialist countries. Even if the United $tates does manage to get enough food aid hand-outs into Afghanistan for the winter and no one starves--and that is unlikely-- the basis for Afghanistan's own capitalist agriculture will be gone. The problem with Amerikkkan video games is that after the rampaging with guns, tanks or bombers, we never see any refugees. So it is with Amerikkkan foreign aggressions that are supported by the average Joe in Amerikkka. Not suprisingly, the average Amerikkkan continues to brag about how everyone is trying to emigrate to the united $tates. Considering the number of countries the united $tates bombs, it's not surprising millions of people are trying to move to the united $tates, but this idea never enters into the consciousness of the Amerikan yahoos. It's something that will only become clear after protracted People's Wars win in several countries or a couple nuclear weapons detonate on U.$. soil. Ironically, it was not until after the social-imperialist Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan that the refugee crisis hit its height. It was in 1990 that Afghanistan received recognition as the world's leading source of refugees. Internal civil war that eventually led the Taliban to power created 6.3 million refugees, 3.3 million in Pakistan and 3 million in Iran as of 1990. At the same time, from 1988 on, more than 4.6 million refugees returned home.(1) According to the United Nations, it did not have the money to do sufficient work in recent years in Afghanistan. Articles on its web page are full of first-hand investigation as the UNHCR becomes involved again. From the web page it becomes clear that the UNHCR does not have an overall grip on the situation. In fact, the UNHCR had withdrawn from Afghanistan and only returned November 17th. On November 21st, the UNHCR started distributing food in Kabul; although food distribution within countries that start refugee flows is not the UNHCR's main job.(2) With the victories of the Northern Alliance, many ethnic Uzbek people have returned home to Afghanistan according to UN reports. At the same time, planeloads of Pakistanis are returning to Pakistan for the same reason--the success of the Northern Alliance which the media says is unfriendly to Pashtuns and other Pakistanis. (Pashtuns can be found in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.)(3) We can also expect more Tajiks and Hazaris in Iran to go back to Afghanistan as the Nothern Alliance consolidates its grip on more territory. To get rid of the refugee burden, among other reasons, Iran has had an interest in the victory of the Northern Alliance. The refugees in Iran have had their costs paid by Iran, because the United $tates earmarked money for the refugees in Pakistan, but not Iran. Between 1979 and 1997, the UNHCR spent $1 billion for the roughly 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and only $150 million for about 3 million in Iran.(4) Indeed, the UN admits that the U.$. aid turned the Pakistan camps into "refugee-warrior communities."(5) These majahedin were fighting the Soviet social-imperialists and that is why they received aid and attention through the United Nations. Soviet and Afghan forces attacked such refugee camps in 1984 in Pakistan. Even after the Soviet social-imperialists withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the refugee camps in Pakistan continued to see the diversion of aid toward military projects. We point this out, because like any charity organization without an independent political base in the oppressed, the UNHCR is simply a figleaf for imperialism. If it were not for the UNHCR, the genocidal impact of U.$. militarism would be greater, but if it were not for the UNHCR, the United $tates would receive more blame than it does. Support for refugees is not politically "neutral." The media and governments allow people to hear about some refugees and not others. The UNHCR allows itself to be used as a publicity ploy by donors who brag about their generosity, when it was usually those same donors who created the problem in the first place, with no UN committee giving blame to the imperialists causing the underlying problems. No doubt many think it is nice to have a full-time job as aid workers for the UNHCR. Such aid workers need to come to an understanding of parasitism, including their own, and the possibilities of the independent economic power of the oppressed. Because the money sources of the UNHCR are not from the grassroots of the oppressed, in Afghanistan, the UNHCR merely perfumes the aggressive actions of the Great Powers that cause massive refugee flows. We can be sure that for every story reviewing how President Carter's right-hand Zbignew Brzezinski intentionally instigated civil war(6) and a refugee crisis in Afghanistan, there are now 100 stories and television hours dedicated to the generosity of Amerikan food aid and the care of refugees--as if such poor people became poor and displaced through non-social and "neutral" causes such as earthquakes. (Even earthquakes cause more damage in bad social situations than good ones.) The United $tates is a johnny-come-lately to the huge rhetoric about "terrorism." President Putin in Russia has been dangling cooperation against terrorism in front of Bush for a long time. MIM Notes reported in the August, 1 2001 issue in an article titled "June was a big month for imperialist contention": "The six nations of SCO have co-ordinated their fire for a joint crackdown on 'terrorism,' especially the militant Muslim kind.(13) Russian President Putin has fired a number of effective volleys at U.$. public opinion, including the public disclosure that it uncovered a Muslim plot to assassinate President George W. Bush in June. Oddly, the 'Great Powers' are talking peace to fight the Islamic 'extremists.' However, Islamic 'extremists' get their support because of the national oppression created under capitalism. All combined, these 'Great Powers' cannot put an end to Islamic 'extremism,' which is sometimes reactionary and sometimes progressive at this time in history." The discussion of these sorts of issues has been going on a long time. The refugees there are not new and neither is the imperialist contention that created them. Rather than getting credit for caring for refugees and letting a fraction into the united $tates and other imperialist countries, the imperialist countries should receive the blame. Notes: 1. United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/afghan?page= facts 2. http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/afghan?page= news&id=3bfbd2b84 3. New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/24/international/ asia/24AFGH.html 4. United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), The State of the World's Refugees: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action (Oxford, England: Oxford Univesity Press, 2000), p. 118. 5. Ibid., p. 120 6. Zbignew B.'s now famous quote: "In an interview three years ago, former National Security Adviser Zbignew Brzezinski answered a question by asking one: 'Which is more important in world history: The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few over-excited Islamists or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?'" WPIX-TV New York, http://sns.wb11.com/news/local/chi-010917attack- gallery.storygallery A nice little summary of the Chicago Tribune and Washington Post can be found here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 134343410_taliban19.html ; Brezezinski is also important for having chaired the Trilateral Commission, a bourgeois internationalist think-tank and capitalist organizing tool.