Two articles by the Indian female writer Arundhati Roy

The Indian female writer, Arundhati Roy, who is renowned for her work "The God of Small Things," has recently gained even more prominence with her two commentaries on the US war in Afghanistan. These commentaries have gained global recognition and have been featured on the front pages of numerous major Western newspapers, receiving widespread circulation in the UK and the US, sparking intense controversy within these nations.

Born in 1961 in Bengal, in 1997, Arundhati Roy became the first Indian woman to win the Booker Prize for English Literature with her novel "The God of Small Things." At the age of 30, she was also selected by People magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world in 1998.

Youth Literature created the title and published these two articles in two different issues of the newspaper. We would like to republish both articles in this book for the benefit of our readers.

LESSON ONE: QUESTIONS FOR AMERICA

How many Iraqis must lose their lives for the world to become a better place? What's the value of one American life compared to the lives of Afghan civilians? How many women and children must perish for the loss of one man's life? How many Mujahideen fighters will die to compensate for the death of one banker?

Here we find ourselves in the midst of an ambiguous divide between civilization and barbarism, between "the slaughter of innocents" and "the clash of civilizations," between "reparations" and chaos, embodying the fallacy and madness of Justice Without Borders.

Following the suicide attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, an American news anchor stated, "Good and evil have never been so clearly revealed. People we don't know are slaughtering people we do know," as he fell to his knees with sorrow.

Herein lies the dilemma: America is at war with people it scarcely comprehends because they are not widely portrayed on TV screens. Without a thorough understanding of the enemy's identity or nature, the US government hastily formed an "International Coalition Against Terrorism," marshaling naval and air power and pressuring allies to join the war effort.

The problem is that once the war begins, it may take on a life of its own. If true adversaries are not found, they may have to be created. War tends to generate its own motivations, justifications, and logic, causing us to lose sight of its original purpose.

Who is America fighting against? On September 20, when the FBI began to express doubts about the identities of some of the hijackers, President Bush claimed, "We know exactly who these individuals are and which government supports them," as if he possessed knowledge beyond the FBI and the American public.

Why did September 11 happen?

In his speech to the National Assembly on September 20, President Bush said, "Americans ask me why they are hated. They are hated for their freedom, freedom of belief, freedom of the press, freedom to vote, and freedom to agree and disagree." From a military and economic strategy perspective, it is crucial for the US government to convince the American public that the very idea of freedom, democracy, and the American way of life is under attack—a notion easily embraced in the midst of pain and anger.

However, if this were true, why were the two symbols of American economic and military might targeted and not the Statue of Liberty? It might be hypothesized that the attack's root cause is not American freedom and democracy but the US government's track record of supporting precisely the opposite—military terrorism, economic exploitation, support for military dictatorships, religious intolerance, and genocide abroad.

It is painful for ordinary Americans to look out into the world with tear-filled eyes and encounter what they perceive as the inscrutable callousness of the human heart. In reality, it was an inevitable consequence. What goes around comes around. Americans should understand that it is not they but their government's policies that are so loathed. They should not doubt that their talented musicians, writers, actors, athletes, and cinema are welcomed worldwide. We are all moved by the courage of firefighters, rescue workers, and those who resumed their duties after the attacks.

The anguish of Americans is profound, and attempting to quantify it would be futile. However, it is regrettable that, instead of using this pain as an opportunity to understand why September 11 happened, America used it as a pretext to demand global sympathy and exact vengeance. If we pose challenging questions and express uncomfortable truths, we risk being hated, disregarded, and ultimately silenced."

Who Created Osama Bin Laden?

There has been a suggestion that Osama Bin Laden might not even exist and that America may have played a role in his creation. This notion stems from the fact that America had a hand in supporting Bin Laden. He was one of the Jihadists who journeyed to Afghanistan in 1979 when the CIA initiated its operations there. Osama Bin Laden is believed to have had connections with the CIA while also being pursued by the FBI. Within just two weeks, he transformed from being a mere suspect to becoming the primary suspect. This transformation occurred despite a lack of concrete evidence, and he was declared as a wanted individual, dead or alive.

A significant number of Americans remain unfamiliar with Afghanistan's location on the world map. However, the U.S. government has had a long-standing relationship with Afghanistan. In 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the CIA and Pakistani intelligence executed one of the largest covert operations in CIA history. This operation aimed to incite a jihad in the Muslim countries of the former Soviet Union against the communist regime. The CIA sponsored and enlisted more than one million Mujahideen Muslims from 40 Muslim countries to serve as fighters. It is paradoxical that the United States inadvertently funded a future conflict against itself.

By 1989, Soviet troops had withdrawn from the devastating war. Nevertheless, the civil war persisted and extended into regions such as Tresnia, Kosovo, and Kassmia. The CIA continued to supply funds and weapons, but this proved insufficient. Mujahideen fighters imposed a "revolutionary tax" on farmers, compelling them to cultivate opium. Pakistani intelligence established hundreds of heroin processing facilities across Afghanistan. Within two years, Afghanistan and Pakistan had become the world's largest drug producers, supplying American streets. Annual profits amounted to between $100 and $200 billion, a considerable sum that was funneled back to fund the war.

In 1995, the extremist Taliban assumed power. This regime garnered support from various Pakistani factions. The first victims were the Afghan people, particularly women. Girls' schools were closed, women were removed from government positions, and Sharia law was enforced, allowing the stoning of "immoral" women and the burial of adulterous widows alive.

What could be more ironic than the cooperation of the United States and Russia to destabilize Afghanistan once again? Can one destroy something that is already in ruins? Dropping more bombs on Afghanistan would only disturb old graves and the resting dead.

So, who is Osama Bin Laden? Or, to rephrase, what is Osama Bin Laden? He is America's enigma, the ghost haunting American presidents, the savage twin of what was meant to be beautiful and civilized. He emerged from a world stripped of American foreign policy: battleship diplomacy, nuclear arsenals, disregard for non-American lives, the brutality of military interventions, support for genocidal dictatorships, and economic agendas that voraciously consume the economies of impoverished nations like swarms of locusts. Transnational corporations plunder the air we breathe, the land we stand on, the water we drink, and the thoughts we conceive.

Now, this family is divided. The Stinger missiles that targeted U.S. aircraft were supplied by the CIA, and the heroin consumed by Americans came from Afghanistan. The U.S. government recently offered Afghanistan $43 million to assist in the "war on drugs." Now, both sides even borrow each other's rhetoric. Both label each other as "the head of the snake." Both invoke God, Good, and Evil. Both wield dangerous weaponry, with one possessing nuclear arms and the other having the destructive power of despair. It's like a confrontation between fireballs and ice arrows. The only certainty is that there will be no humility from either side.

The lives of the people are the only things at stake.

In 1996, a major American television network asked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright how she felt about the deaths of five million Iraqi children due to the U.S. embargo. She responded, "It was a difficult choice, but it was worth it." Mrs. Albright never faced repercussions for her statement. She continued to travel the world, advocating the views and goals of the U.S. government. The embargo on Iraq remained in place, and children continued to perish.

As we watch on television, the world's most powerful nations unite against one of the poorest, most underdeveloped, and most war-torn countries—Afghanistan, which is also home to Osama Bin Laden, considered responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The only valuable aspect in Afghanistan is the lives of its people (including half a million disabled orphans). Afghanistan's economy is in a dire state. A challenge for the invaders is that there's almost nothing to mark on the map—no major cities, highways, or factories. Farms have become mass graves, and over 10 million landmines are buried in the rural landscape. American troops had to clear these mines and construct roads to facilitate troop deployment.

More than one million people have fled their homes for the Pakistani border. The BBC reports that one of the most significant humanitarian tragedies of our time has commenced. Look at the justice of today: civilians starve, awaiting their fate. Unfortunately, by inadvertently causing harm to Afghan civilians, America is indirectly aiding the Taliban have more motivation. In America, there is talk about bombing Afghanistan to bring it back to the Stone Age. Some individuals have even expressed enthusiasm, suggesting that Afghanistan is already in that era, and America is merely assisting it further.

Can terrorism be eradicated through violence and oppression?

The Justice Without Borders campaign claims to be defending the American way of life. However, it is possible that this approach may lead to bankruptcy and foster more hatred and terrorism worldwide. For the average American, this engenders a sense of ominous uncertainty. Is my child safe at school? Will there be tear gas in the subway? Is there a bomb in the movie theater? Will my loved one return home tonight? CNN consistently issues warnings about the potential threat of biological warfare, with concerns about smallpox and anthrax. Sometimes, surviving such a threat might be more dreadful than being destroyed simultaneously by atomic bombs.

Ironically, the U.S. government suggests that terrorism can be eradicated through the use of violence and oppression. Terrorism should be viewed as a symptom, not the root cause. Terrorism knows no national boundaries; it is transnational and globalized, much like Coca-Cola or Nike. When faced with difficulties, terrorists can shift their operations and relocate factories from one country to another. Terrorism is a persistent phenomenon that doesn't simply vanish. If it is to be curbed, the first step is to remind America that they coexist on this planet with other countries and people, even if these nations and individuals do not frequently appear on American TV screens. They, too, possess love, pain, suffering, their own stories and songs, sadness, and the right to exist. However, when U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked what victory in this new war would entail, he responded that it would mean Americans could continue with their way of life.

The September 11 attacks delivered a bizarre message from a world that had gone horribly awry. The authorship of these attacks could be attributed to Bin Laden and executed by his followers, but it could also be seen as a message signed by the specters of past wars.

Millions of lives were lost in conflicts like the Korean War, Vietnam War, and the Cambodian Genocide. In 1982, during Israel's attack on Lebanon, with U.S. support, 17,500 people were killed. Operation Desert Storm claimed the lives of two million Iraqis, thousands of Palestinians died in their resistance to Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip, and millions more perished in conflicts in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Panama, often due to the actions of terrorists, dictators, and genocidal leaders who were supported, trained, and armed by the U.S. This list is far from exhaustive. For a nation involved in so many conflicts, America has been fortunate. The September 11 attacks marked only the second time in the past century that the U.S. was attacked on its own soil, the first being the Pearl Harbor attack, which led to a protracted retaliation culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This time, the entire world held its breath, dreading further calamities.

Translation by Tran Le Thuy, published in Young Arts.