From Kommunistisk Politik, No. 3, February 2, 2002
The peace weekend January 26-27 in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, ended
with a very successful international peace conference held at the University
of Copenhagen.
Two former ministers from two countries at war were present at the conference,
former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Afghanistan's former Minister of
Labour and Social Affairs Ustad Zia Ul-Haq, united in the struggle against the
war and for a more humane society.
Also present was the exciting and controversial Egyptian Karam Khella, professor
at the University of Hamburg in Germany, and Sharon Ceci, an American peace
activist of the International Action Center, a voice of "the Other US",
the US of the common people.
Around 250 people were gathered to learn something about the "War on Terror"
and its perspectives - and they were not disappointed. The conference was chock-full
with information, facts, and serious feelings stemming from the sufferings that
war and militarism impose on the peoples of the world, not at least, of the
Third World.
The conference participants understood that something new, something important,
was happening with this event, which gathered the Danish peace movement and
laid the foundations for the direction in which it will work in the future.
Dorte Grenaa of the initiative "No to War and Terror" and Chairman
of the Workers' Communist Party of Denmark (APK) opened the conference by quoting
the final sentence of a greeting to the conference made by the famous Danish
musicians, Thomas Koppel and Annisette from the Savage Rose: "Let it (the
conference, translator's note) be a harbinger of spring."
The storm of applause showed that the audience agreed in that.
All the interventions and debates were in English. The conference lasted for
six hours, and after each intervention of approximately 45 minutes, questions
were asked and answers given. The conference ended with a concluding debate.
Fortunately, the conference used professional simultaneous interpreting, which
meant that nobody had to miss any of the many pearls coming from the lips of
the panel.
Sharon Ceci, trade unionist and peace activist of the International Action
Center and the peace coalition A.N.S.W.E.R., held a speech on "The US after
September 11". She spoke about a nation placed on a war footing, about
a growing militarisation of the whole society, and about the record increase
of the US military budget while at the same time going through an economic crisis
and cutting social welfare. Ordinary Americans are paying the war, and the price
is high.
"American patriotism and wavering the flag is nothing but a thin varnish.
Underneath the American people are deeply worried about the future," she
said.
She also said that around 800,000 Americans have lost their jobs; in New York
alone, this has been the case for more than 100,000 people. If you believe that
the donations have benefited the victims, then you had better think again; many
people have lost their jobs and their homes, she said.
Ustad Zia Ul-Haq, a Muslim professor, a Mujahedin, and former minister in Afghanistan
after the withdrawal of Soviet troops, now being in exile in Denmark, stressed
that he did not see himself as an Afghan, but rather as a citizen of the world:
"Human kind is universal, and the Muslim duty of looking out for the poor
and suffering holds globally and independently of faith."
And he went on by saying: "The Soviet Union was forced out of Afghanistan,
but a stable regime, which could defend the national interests of Afghanistan,
was not created instead. The US did not want a revolutionary Muslim regime like
the one in Iran during the first period after the fall of the Shah and played
its agents and clan chiefs out against another in order to dissolve the government.
This created the conditions for the Taliban, who had been trained in religious
schools in Pakistan with the help of the US and Saudi Arabian money. Their caricature
of Islam did great damage. When the Taliban did not want to comply with all
the US demands, the Americans made short work of them. Afghanistan has been
at permanent war; since the Soviet invasion, 1.5 million people have been killed
as a result of war. The sufferings are incomprehensible, but it is not only
the Afghan people, who are suffering. All victims of colonialism, which is a
reality even though it is not named colonialism, are suffering every day. They
suffer during war, but also during the colonial "peace".
In the international media, the Afghan people are being pictured as primitive,
wild, and barbaric. The Afghans are not like this; contradictions between different
peoples, between the different clans, have been systematically fostered. Active
in this have been the many different aid organisations functioning as tools
of different foreign powers that have interfered in the internal affairs of
Afghanistan."
Ramsey Clark spoke in a low voice and earnestly about US militarism and the
terror war: 3 million victims in the Korean War (55,000 US soldiers), 2 million
in Vietnam, 1.5 million dead Iraqis due to the war and blockade against Iraq,
more than 70 bigger US interventions after the Second World War, and now the
biggest military budget ever, which shows that the US intends to follow the
same road and strengthen its military dominance all over the world, without
regarding the expenses being paid by the civilian populations.
"The US has specialized in destroying any country without having to count
body bags, without US soldiers having to be engaged in combat," he said.
Without NATO, without allies to do the dirty work on the ground, this could
not be possible was another point expressed by the former US Attorney General,
and he went on saying: "The US wages war for defending US interests. Why
will the NATO member countries sacrifice their young people as canon fodder
for defending the interests of others?
The international peace movement must dissolve NATO because without this alliance,
the US would have to overstrain itself in order to militarily control everything
and everybody."
The former Democratic US Attorney General, who was appointed to the US government
by John F. Kennedy, and later served in the Lyndon Johnson Administration, is
one of the most noticeable critics of US militarism inside the US itself and
a sharp critic of the racist and unjust legal system in the US. In an article
in the Danish daily newspaper, Information, on January 26, he is almost portrayed
as being some kind of "a Stalinist fellow traveller". Among his ideals
is militant non-violence. "Martin Luther King is underestimated,"
he stated at a press meeting following the conference. Luther King was killed
because he protested the Vietnam War and wanted to connect the civil rights
movement with the struggle against the distress and misery in the US.
Being asked what he would have done if he had been US Attorney General today,
he answered: "The war against Afghanistan has no juridical legitimacy.
The US should obey the law."
Ramsey Clark's speech was a speech from a man representing the best in the US:
humanity and humanism, the courage of taking responsibility for one's opinions,
and the responsibility of being a citizen of a nation, which is tyrannizing
over a whole world for satisfying the greediness of the monopolies.
When he was asked about if he had paid any personal price by denouncing the
crimes of the US, he replied: "It has not cost me anything, but I have
learned from it. And I have come to know you and a whole world. I have done
something."
His speech resulted in a warm applause that was about not to end.
In an exciting intervention, Karam Khella examined the physiognomy and properties
of modern war.
Without the psychological preparations for war, without in advance creating
a situation paralysing the consciousness and the possible protest, it is not
possible for the US to keep the world in a constant state of militarism and
war and go from one war to another, Karam Khella said. Every war must be prepared
concretely and psychologically, but an active anti-war movement in the belligerent
countries can stop every concrete war.
On NATO, Karam Khella stated: "After the dissolution of the Warsaw Treaty,
NATO could have been dissolved. Instead the operational field of NATO was extended;
it became the whole world. NATO, this "defensive alliance", is just
a word. When NATO wages war, it is concrete countries, with their own agendas
and objectives, which wage the war, and always headed by the US."
A lot of questions were asked and the debate was serious and lively. When Dorte
Grenaa ended the conference by stressing its importance as an inspiration and
a valuable take-off for the Danish peace movement, the audience of the conference
went along with what she was saying, as it enthusiastically applauded her concluding
remarks.