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Is This What They Voted For?

03/09/08

Occupation forces in Afghanistan killed five children in two separate incidents yesterday (Monday), adding to the toll of foreign atrocities in the war-torn Asian country.

NATO admitted it killed three children in an artillery strike in eastern Afghanistan. In by now a familiar story, the occupation forces claimed they fired the artillery rounds in response to an insurgent attack on their patrol in the Gayan district of Pakitika province; one of the rounds hit a near-by house, killing the children and wounding seven other civilians.

In another attack, east of the capital Kabul, foreign forces killed a man and his two children during a raid in the town of Utkheil. A relative of the victims, Yahya Khan, said the man’s wife was wounded in the raid.

These latest deaths follow a finding by the United Nations that the US military massacred 90 civilians – among them 60 children – in a single attack in Afghanistan last month.

As the lifeblood flowed from Yahya Khan’s family members and the people of Gayan retrieved the body parts of three children from the ruins of their even more vulnerable refuge, ‘respectable’ men and women were mulling over the most appropriate way to honour the child killers.

Thousands of miles from Pakitika, Kabul and Utkheil, the elected members of Belfast City Council decided - on the same day that more devastation was visited upon the people of Afghanistan - that one of the British regiments involved in the occupation should be rewarded with a military parade around the city upon their return to Ireland.

While an impoverished population precariously picks up the pieces from the latest attack and cowers in fear in the face of the most technologically advanced killing machines in the world, a battalion of their tormentors, in the form of the Royal Irish Regiment, will be taking a bow in front of those too stupid or callous to care about the actions of their heroes.

Of course, not all of Belfast will be caught in the rush to give “our boys” a pat on the back. The residents of the Short Strand, Andersonstown, Ardoyne and elsewhere are all too aware of what the people of Afghanistan have had to put up with given the unwelcome presence of the RIR in their communities.

For the best part of 30 years, the RIR and their predecessors in the UDR tormented nationalist communities – at roadblocks, on foot patrols and acting in collusion with unionist death squads to kill hundreds.

Away from the prying eyes of the media, it doesn’t bear thinking about what these bullyboys and bigots got up to while acting on Elizabeth Windsor’s behalf.

Yet, seemingly oblivious to the concerns and suffering of the nationalist people of Belfast and the occupied people of Afghanistan, the unionist members of the City Council have decided to parade the RIR through public thoroughfares.

For those who have even a passing knowledge of Belfast City Council, this will not come as a surprise. From councillors calling for the catholic population to be incinerated to other councillors being ejected from the chamber for daring to speak in Irish, Belfast would have the unenviable record of having the most reactionary council in Europe were it not for the close competition of some of its municipal neighbours in the Six Counties.

Asking the councillors responsible to hang their heads in shame over this matter would probably be a waste of breath. Taking to the streets and actively opposing the thugs who occupy Ireland and Afghanistan for the British government might force the politicians to think twice before they parade their soldiers through Irish streets again. This is exactly what éirígí intends to do.

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