Interview with Jack Layton Continued from Page 10

OP: But don’t you think that the people who are attacking would oppose the presence of any foreigners at all? For terrorists, they don’t see it as a matter of soldiers versus humanitarian workers, they just see it as foreigners, and foreigners have to be blown up and killed. So regardless of whether or not we are fighting or just building hospitals or whatever, the people who want to kill them will continue to attack, so long as any for- eigners of any sort—no matter how well-intentioned—are in their country.

LAYTON: I don’t think the facts back up that approach, that analysis. I know that’s what is being portrayed by the government, but Afghanistan is a very complex place. There are war- lords, there are ancillary, there are layered political structures and military structures, and eco- nomic structures that feed into everything. Even elections—you have people who are known criminals and warlords according to Malalai Joya and many others, who are now elected into the so-called democratic government.

You've got a pattern over the last number of years, of an ebb and flow. You’ve got the Northern Alliance, an alliance of various pockets of ethnic and tribal structures, that go back many yeats—decades if not centuries. Therefore, saying that those who are committing insur- gency have a kind of specific perspective on anyone who’s in Afghanistan suggests that it’s even possible for significant numbers of people in Afghanistan to have specific perspectives. That isn’t possible. It’s a very pluralistic society from the standpoint of perspectives and points of view.

Also, there’s an underpinning of resentment in Afghanistan of occupying entities. If there’s one thing that will unify Afghanis, historically speaking, it has been the sense that “we’ve got to push occupiers out.” The Russians learned this perhaps more dramatically than anyone else. And what we’re doing in the war in the south is giving an illustration of that same kind of occupying force, sending tanks in is sort of the ultimate signature, and fighter jets strafing will cap it off. All it does is give a gift to those who are saying “look at your fields, you can’t pro- vide a livelihood for your family, your social structures are being completely disrupted, we’re going to stand up for you and try to help you out.” And this is what more and more analysts:

are identifying, including people involved in the military and people from Afghanistan. They’re saying, “you’re providing fodder for those who say that insurgency is the best way to go.” This is certainly happening in Iraq, and we’re seeing the same kind of phenomenon in Afghanistan. OP: On a somewhat related note, a recent poll said that over 50% of Canadians believe 9-11 was largely the result of American foreign policy. Do you agree?

LAYTON: There’s certainly a deep concern that not paying attention to the rampant growth o global inequality and allowing despair to occupy the daily attention of billions on the globe

“rather than trying to pursue the international development goals of trying to lift people out of

poverty, and allow them to begin to move to the kind of life that we have, is, at the fundamen- tal level, a failure of American foreign policy.

As is spending half a trillion dollars a year on the military, whereas we can’t muster a few mil- lion to deal with the poverty issues that could be addressed with a fraction of the investment that goes into this massive military. The Americans spend half the world’s military budget even though they’re what percentage of the global population? 250 million out of six billion? It’s a remarkable disequilibrium that exists globally now, and the moral choices that are being made- and the choices of how you spend money faced with world circumstances amount to moral choices, those moral choices are flawed. And they allow those with alternative agendas, that they predicate on moral foundations, to have ammunition to grow.

I don’t think it’s a question of drawing a direct line, as one does in polling questions, between causé and effect. But I do believe we'd have a safer world if there was dramatically less poverty and it’s within our grasp to do that.

Stay tuned next week for Part II of the interview. Check out www.theotherpress.ca for the full transcript.

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