Notes on the Fifth World War

^{F.d.C.A.

FEDERAZIONE dei COMUNISTI ANARCHICI

(Federation of Anarchist Communists)}

Notes on

The Fifth World War

0. A Chronology

0.1 1st World War: 1914-1918, so-called beginning of the 20th Century

0.2 2nd World War: 1939-1945, so-called continuation of the first

0.3 3rd World War: 1947-1989, so-called Cold War (see writings of Subcommandant Marcos of the EZLN, Chiapas, Mexico) considered to be the end of the 20th Century

0.4 4th World War: 1991-2000, so-called war of neo-liberalist economic, military aggression on natural resources, markets, world cultural heritage (again, see writings of Marcos)

0.5 5th World War: 2001-……, which seems to have had its military beginnings between September 11 and October 7 2001, or maybe not…

1. This War

1.1 The Beginning

On January 17, 1991, the UN - in the light of US troop deployments in Saudi Arabia the previous month - authorized the attack on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, guilty of having invaded Kuwait. US allies at the time included Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Syria and Kuwait. Involvement of Arab states in an attack on another Arab state on the part of NATO powers appeared a notable political and military success for what was at the time known as the "New World Order", while the USSR’s euthanasia was in progress (and finished in December). In reality, that war - apparently a local war - showed signs of a bad upset in the political balance of Arab and Islamic countries, and while American interests may have been the winner, the same cannot be said for stability in the Middle East and southwestern Asia. In fact, since then, and at the same time as that which Marcos called the 4th World War, there has been a real conflict which has included some significant events.

^{1.2 Some Dates

In 1993, a planned attack on the New York Twin Towers was discovered
in time; again in 1993 in Mogadishu, 18 Marines die following armed conflicts with Islamic
opposition to the "Restore Hope" operation in Somalia, which Bush Snr gets the
US out of; in 1996 the American camp at Khobar in Saudi Arabia is hit; in 1998 in Nairobi
and Dar-es-Salaam the US embassies are hit and a US warship is attacked in the port of
Aden. From 1995 to 2000, 77 American citizens die during various international attacks
with 651 injured.

In 1992 the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front kills President
Boudiaf, which marks the beginning of a massacre of "infidels" in Algeria. In
the same year, the Saudi ulama publishes a public letter of rebuke to King Fahd for having
participated in "Desert Storm". In 1993, a civil war breaks out in Tajikistan
for ethnic and political reasons, one which features the Islamic group Harakut-ul-Ansar
(HUA) in Pakistan which is fighting for the secession of India’s Kashmir territory.

In 1994 in Bosnia, there are a thousand non-Bosnian Muslim fighters
among Izetbegovic’s militias, some from the HUA. In Zenica, around 200 non-Bosnian
Muslim fighters are reported. They are called "Afghans" as they form sections of
the fighters trained by the British SAS in war against the USSR in Afghanistan, but are in
fact of different nationalities.

In 1995 in Addis Ababa, there is an attempt on the life of Egyption
President Mubarak on the part of members of the Sudanese group Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya.

In 1996, bin Laden launches an appeal for jihad against the
Americans.

Since 1998, there have been confirmed instances of Egyptian and
Iranian jihad fighters in the ranks of the Albanian UCK in Kosovo and Macedonia, while bin
Laden’s financial operations in Albania date back to 1994.

Again in 1998, there is the formation of the International Islamic
Front (IIF) which counts as its members the al-Qa’eda group of bin Laden, the Afgani
Taleban of Mullah Omar, Maulana Masud Azhar’s HUA from Pakistan, Ayman
el-Zawahri’s Islamic Jihad from Egypt, Omar Abdel Rahman’s Gamaa Islamica from
Egypt, Yasser el-Sirri’s New Vanguards of Conquest group from Egypt, and
Jordan’s Army of Mohammed which has the stated aim of establishing a single Islamic
state, the Umma. But within the military structure there is assistance (even if not IIF
members) of nationalist Islamic Jihad organizations who limit themselves to the Holy War
of national liberation. They are the Lebanese Hezbollah of Hassan Nasrallah, Ahmad
Yassin’s Hamas group from Palesatine, the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad of Ramadan
Abdallah Shallah, Maulana al-Hafez Mohammed Said’s Laskar-e-Taiba from Pakistan, the
Uzbeki islamic movement and Abu Sayyaf of Mindanao in the Philippines. Probably also the
Algerina GIA of Antar Zouabri, which in 1994 had planned the destruction of the Eiffel
Tower using a plane which was hijacked and successively stopped at Marseilles.

In 2000 the second Palestinian intifada breaks out. The USA works
ever more closely with the Zionist invaders.

In 2001, the Twin Towers in Manhattan, New York are destroyed.

1.3 The False Objectives of the War

The attack on Afghanistan is not aimed at defeating terrorism or
capturing bin Laden.

The attack on the USA is not designed to punish it for having
occupied the sacred sites of Islam or for corrupting Arab governments.

The attack on Afghanistan is not aimed at freeing the country from
the Taleban dictatorship.

The attack on the USA is not aimed at restoring fundamentalist
Islamic rule in Muslim countries.

The attack on Afghanistan is not aimed at liquidating the various
armed bands financed by the USA for 10 years during the 80’s.

The attack on the USA is not designed to punish it for the
Palestinian situation, for the embargo on Iraq or for the poverty of the Muslim
proletariat.

1.4 The Stakes

1.4.1 Energy Resources and "Corridors"

There are notable energy resources in the area (though not in
Afghanistan), such as oil and gas. The transport of these to the West (Black Sea,
Mediterranean Sea), to the East (industrial areas of south-east China), to the North
(Russia) and to the South (Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean) comes about through points and
corridors which either already exist or are in construction or planning stages. The
resources originate in territories which are controlled bvy governments or opposition
powers of an ethnic-religious nature. The corridors cross through various territories,
with a consequent multiplication of the same problem. The struggle for control has so far
taken place through financial coups in technology and arms against one elite or another,
according to the laws of the market and interests at stake. Russia, China and the USA have
not spared any expense in manpower or resources in this decisive war for domination.

Regional powers like Israel, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Iran or even
Iraq should not be forgotten either.

1.4.2 Stability in the Area

Up to 1989-91, stability in the area was provided by the balance of
interests between the USA, the USSR and the regional powers. The advantages of the
financing countries (USA and USSR) correspond to the advantages of the financed
bourgeoisies and local power castes, in a daring game of economic-military agreements
which then gave rise to long, bloody wars such as that between Iraq and Iran or the one of
the Islamic Alliance against the invading USSR in Afghanistan, or else to the nuclear
proliferation in Pakistan and India following conflicts for the control of Kashmir, or
again, to the contemporaneous massacre of the Kurds by Turkey, Iraq and Iran. The strategy
which can be summed up as "the enemy of my enemy is my friend, for now...for the
future we’ll have to see" has rendered the area permanently unstable and
therefore permanently plausible any military intervention, either direct or by proxy, with
the stated aim of domination under the name of stability. With the withdrawal of Soviet
troops from Afghanistan in 1989 and the end of the power of the USSR, the problem of
destabilization worsens. The sizeable flow of US military and financial aid to the Muslim
states and Islamic guerrillas for anticommunist purposes was repaid with the elimination
of thousands of left-wing activists and unionists and with the activation of a flowering
production and distribution of opium reaching to the shores of the Adriatic (Albania), but
also made possible both a reinforcing of the dominant Arab bourgeoisie on the one hand and
the consolidation and alliance between the armed Islamic groups of the other, who, freed
from the Soviet threat, now aim to challenge the American yoke and any other competitor,
with an unconventional war which is denominated terrorism. The Shanghai Group, formed in
June 2001 with Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan has as
its main aim the fight against terrorism - Islamic terrorism, obviously.

1.4.3 Command of the Crisis Area

Without stability or a guarantor of stability, the exploitation of
resources and corridors becomes problematic. There arises, therefore, the need to
establish command over the area presently in crisis. However, the USA’s adversary is
no longer the USSR. Neither is it Russia, which is afflicted with the same problems of
control and stability in Chechnya and in the former Central Asian republics. Nor China,
newly admitted WTO member, even if it has been redefined as a competitor country rather
than a partner of the Bush administration, as it too suffers from the problems of control
and stability in the Muslim Xinjiang region which borders Afghanistan. It is not even the
economically powerful ruling Arab or Muslim bourgeoisies or castes, who are divided by
opposing interests (from religious to those of sub-powers). The newly-aspiring adversary,
an economic competitor as well as military enemy, is the International Islamic Front
(IIF), founded in 1998 by certain well-known, clandestine Arabs and Muslims, among whom
Osama bin Laden, who are proteted by state secret services and who boast supranational,
operative military bases, blobalized financial movements, powerful media capacities and a
hold on Arab and Muslim governments.}
2. Pretexts and Class Nature of the International Islamic Front

2.1 The Affront of 1991

^{While the origin of the various fundamentalist Islamic groups
drawing together under the name of the IIF may be the "sacrilegious" invasion of
the Arabian Peninsula by the USA & Co., of no less importance is the devastation of
the Iraqi people or the submission and subjection of Arab governments to the USA. The
problem of command over an area which is vital for the control over oil, passed from being
of an economic nature to a purely military one, and the reply could only have been
military.

^{2.2 The Palestinian Question

The tragic situation of the Palestinians has only recently appeared
among the priorities of the IIF and its militants and is greatly instrumentalized.
Militarily, it upholds the traditional jihad against Israel rather than a political
solution which could lead to the creation of a moderate Palestinian State in the hands of
the Palestinian Authority. The mirroring of military actions on the part of the Israeli
army and the Palestinian fighters leads one to suspect a strongly reciprocal interest in
NOT finding a political solution on the grounds of some possible loss of justification for
the violent origins of the Jewish state and the terrorist degeneration of the Palestinian
struggle.

2.3 God and Power

The various allied jihad factions who have gone to war against the
USA have rather self-evident objectives:}}

to strike at the USA, and therefore also at its allies, in order to unleash militarist irrationality;

to weaken moderate Arab governments in order to permit a takeover by a new dominant class which will set up an Islamic state;

to use the miserable conditions of the Arab and Islamic proletariat in order to create a mass opposition to the economic domination of globalization (some Islamic fundamentalist groups were even present at Seattle!!), but NOT to the domination of the old or any future Islamic bourgeoisies in power;

to pose as the only possible financiers of protection services for the people (hospitals, schools, ...) in order to attract public support, the support of the streets and a few new recruits for jihad;

to use the "slaughter" image of Islam in order to feed a clash of civilizations, a lockdown against the impure "West" and also against those "infidels" be they even Islamic, who fight to free Islamic society from the dictatorships and caste exploitation and from governing oligarchies, who would wish to govern, under the protection of Islam.

3. Pretexts and Class Nature of the US-led Military Intervention

3.1 Terrorism

^{The fight against terrorism, after the tragedy of 11 September,
restores the supposed right of the USA to act as the defender of freedom and democracy,
which had been greatly reduced in recent decades. It places the USA at the centre of a
vast alliance which is visibly shifting the old balance of power, involving Russia and
China. But terror too is the lengthy war which has been declared against the scapegoat,
Afghanistan - terror too is what the USA has financed for decades and still does today.
Terror continues to be the state of endemic economic crisis which the US provokes all over
the world.

^{3.2 Militarism

The military tactic used against New York and the use of biological
weapons has brought about a rethinking in the US and NATO military structure. For a
country which is close to exceeding $310bn a year in military spending, it is a matter of
making difficult decisions of a technological and numeric nature, placing the future of
the American armed forces and American military strategy at the centre of its national
interests.

The missile defence system project (even though it will take more
than the 4 years of the Bush presidency to realize) is more likely to be carried out as a
deterrent against missiles which are readily available on the arms market, however,
instead of technological innovations there may be a preference for, or addition of, a
renewed emphasis on conventional arms and troop numbers which would raise the level of
militarism in such a way that the Cold War years will be the most peaceful since WWII.

3.3 The European Union and NATO

As they are unlike each other, and as the latter prevails over the
former as far as members go, the problems of the crisis management of the war which face
the EU governments (except for the UK) is obvious... The war crisis compromises the plans
for European economic recovery and requires greater investment in military expenditure and
the financing of military missions outside the Community. The disgraceful covering policy
of "humanitarian wars" or "peacekeeping" missions seems to be heading
for extinction, forcing the European governments to go � la guerre comme � la
guerre, in the name of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty and its updates (1999), for the
sake of "anti-terrorism". Furthermore, the role of the EU shows signs of
weakening fatally with the new rapprochement between the USA and Russia and between the
USA and China.

Italy, in particular, which had initially been completely
marginalized internationally thanks to its government’s clumsiness (from the
repression at Genoa to the declaration of superiority of "western" civilization,
from the laws restricting the use of cross-border evidence in investigations of financial
matters to those on immigration and the decriminalization of false accounting) has managed
to recover a tiny part in the military operations in Afghanistan, continuing the
militarist renaissance which began with Lebanon in 1982.

^{3.4 Economic Recession

The timing of the attacks on New York and Washington adds nothing to
what is by now an endemic economic crisis, if not a probable process of concentration of
capital and investment on such sectors as the war industries, security systems, the
chemicals and pharmaceuticals industries, new technologies and so on with a consequent
jubilation of markets depressed by the continual losses of the Nasdaq. Sustained by huge,
well-aimed state interventions (security, health, transport), the recession could seem, as
happened in the last 5 years, to have a dual aspect - that of a killer, outside the USA
(starting with the allies of southeast Asia and South America) and of a shuttlecock in the
the USA.}

4. The Cockfight (Between Cultures)

4.1 Superior Stabat Lupus, or The Wolf & The Lamb

Militarists, warmongers, politicians and Catholic, Christian, Jewish
and Islamic fundamentalists, conservatives of all shapes and sizes, are all convinced and
spread the message that the ruinous element which contaminates and renders the source of
their civilizations impure, is the filthy presence of others, those who are different,
infidels, unhealthy carriers who poison cultural and religious identities.

This syndrome could seriously worsen during this international
crisis which sees both sides talking about a "crusade" or "jihad" -
modernity versus a return to the dark ages. All this in an already turbulent movement,
given that well before the present international crisis the syndrome was spreading on the
crest of a wave of migrations. From east to West, from South to North, sustained by the
often fatal sacrifice of thousands of refugees fleeing from warfare, from repression, from
misery, from never-ending poverty. Wherever neo-liberalism and globalization brought the
rules of the IMF and the World Bank, it was there where the conditions for mass emigration
towards the source of "aid" were produced; wherever neo-liberalism armed
nationalists and power cliques, it was there where large-scale emigration on payment
towards the source of the arms was organized.

Low-cost non-unionized manpower for capitalist production to the
north or northwest in opposition to workers who had been unionized for decades; low-cost
non-unionized manpower for capitalist production to the east, south or south-east, thanks
to delocalization. Exploitation and emargination. Nothing less. Men and women forced to
flee from the suffering provoked by the economic and military policies of their
governments, drawn from countries governed by the accomplices and financiers of their
governments.

Thus, suspicion and diffidence take the place of class solidarity.
On both sides.

each side launched against the other like a cockfight. In the name
of some supposed superiority of civilization.

4.2 Sacrificial Victims

Those on both sides who agitate and incite this clash of cultures,
or at least the incompatibility of cultures, know well what they want:

to prevent, in the receiving countries, any process of
transformation and cross-cultural contamination which (once the limits of integration are
reached and a state of multicultural society begins) aims to establish a citizenship of
full rights where class solidarity overcomes, as was already being said in 1864, race, sex
or religious differences;
to prevent, in emigrant countries, any process of transformation
which leads to a progressive secularization, any parity of rights between men and women,
any organization and class opposition not only to the "western" exploiters, but
also to the Islamic ones;
to activate ancestral, though unfounded, "blood"
relationships or religious relationships on a world-wide level, without taking into
account the tragedies that this has already provoked and does so even now, with the aim of
blotting out any attempt at dialogue, co-operation or solidarity.}

5. Our Stakes

5.1 Anti-militarism

^{It is necessary to seek to spread as much as possible a strong
anti-militarist consciousness, above all of the growing military occupation, physical and
otherwise of civilized society and of the growth of an aberrant conviction of the
"state of necessity" of a military presence in every corner of the globe which
can guarantee (sic!) security. The growth and political activity of an equally global
movement which is strongly anti-militarist and anti-war, which can reveal and denounce the
indissoluble link between militarism and capitalism:

wars always break out as a result of a clash of enormous
economic interests and geopolitical powers; the cover of anti-terrorism, humanitarianism,
nationalism, ethnicity, religion or tribalism which, according to the case is given, only
serves to hide the real stakes and to spread feelings of hate with the aim of setting the
weakest, poorest classes against each other;
nationalism and ethnicity or religion are the ideologies
which are being used more and more frequently by national states (often developing
countries and very poor countries) and by economic and military cliques in order to obtain
social consensus for protectionist economic policies, designed to cut out niches for
themselves in the markets or the control of deposits and strategic corridors within
globalization, with very high social costs for the working classes; fighting
nationalism means fighting capitalism;
militarism and the militarization of society are the forms
of social control and constriction which accompany nationalist ideology; they constitute
the global market of the arms trade, fighting militarism means fighting capitalism;
anti-terrorist or "humanitarian" military
intervention, against various castes and dictators or in support of warring
nationalist interests, does not lead to liberation and democracy but to a state of endemic
war; alongside a semi-perennial stationing of armies and military bases (NATO and
otherwise) in the war zones and neighbouring countries for the protection of the economic
interests of international capitalism, there is a growth of the hypocritical market for
"humanitarian aid" through which all sorts of speculation and recycling which is
far from humanitarian takes place; fighting military intervention means fighting
capitalism;
the pacifist and non-violent movement must fight for the
withdrawal of Italy from military operations, for a cease-fire on all sides and for peace,
against the "Son of Star Wars" project and the increase in military spending,
for peaceful humanitarian intervention and for international solidarity, for the
assistance and welcoming of refugees and deserters, for the withdrawal of armies,
disarming and demilitarization on the ground and in society; for the improvement of civil
society, so that peace can help the resumption of the social and class conflict, if
possible peacefully and non-violently, but in any case anti-capitalist; fighting for
peace means fighting against capitalism;
the structures which the movement can provide itself are of
a federalist, horizontal, anti-authoritarian nature, with particular attention paid to the
spread of anti-war committees and committees against military bases, and of observatories
on militarization on the ground and in society;
the decisive factors are anti-capitalism and the refusal of
militarism (institutional militarism and militarism of popular movements).

5.2 Trade + Security = Less Freedom

The war being fought on the home front is ready to sacrifice those
residual areas of liberty which have survived the authoritarian devastation of
neo-liberalism. Harsher anti-terrorist measures by various western governments are
justified by the necessity of guaranteeing the security of their citizens. But in reality,
the emergency nature of these measures which "suspend" certain liberties or
rights or which extend further controls over our lives, is overwhelmed by the tendency to
endemicize this and other conflicts. A sort of perpetual state of war with a frontline,
though geographically far-off seems near at hand as a result of the effect of the media,
and a home front equally militarized, not only as a rearguard (military bases, security
services, "sensitized" information) but as another frontline against the
"enemy" at home (immigrants, pacifists, anti-militarists, anti-globalization
protestors, anti-war union members and their various organizations).

The social, political, syndicalist and cultural movement which
fights against globalization and for peace must strongly oppose freedom-killing measures
masquerading as anti-terrorism which the government and parliament wish to pass. This
is how elements of authoritarianism which are difficult to reverse are intoduced into our
legislation (see, for example, the fascist Rocco Code or the Reale Law of the 70's), with
the aim of armour-plating civilian society and consigning it into the hands of an
executive power with a free hand against any social, political or union opposition which
dares to contest or stand up to the national or international policies of the government.

5.3 The War Economy

The 2002 Budget is strongly influenced by the war climate. What
better time to block or attempt to reduce civil servants’ salaries while making
significant resources available for an expansion of the military intervention in the
Balkans or alongside the USA and UK in Central Asia?! What better time to make drastic
cuts in staff, to begin that reduction in public spending so dear to the government, when
you have the excuse of authorizing increases in personnel and spending only for the armed
forces and the "stability" of the country?

The policies of a lowering of demand and therefore of consumption,
together with an anachronistic fight against a largely physiological inflation, far from
stimulating structural support (war Keynesianism, sic!) or for the purposes of improving
the political climate (tax reductions), actually encourages a never-ending process of
flexibility, mobility, staff reduction, symptoms which produce a constant diminution of
salaries and a progressive wearing away of union and social rights. And the first victims
of the eugenetic social policies are the immigrant or clandestine workers.

Furthermore, in a context which seems to be changing its face,
leaving monetary policies behind only to enact policies of book-balancing, the role of
public expenditure takes on a decisive importance in order to guarantee levels of
citizenship founded on rights, guarantees and controls which are equal for all. The
social, political, union and cultural movement which is fighting against the war and for
peace must strongly oppose the 2002 Budget Bill in order to win spending increases for
social services and for the contracts of hundreds of thousands of public sector workers.
It must support every struggle for the renewal of contracts and the safeguarding of union
rights for the private sector. It must aim for a redistribution of wealth, for an
extension of union rights to all workers and temporary workers, be they Italian citizens
or not...

5.4 Secularism and Anti-Racism

5.4 Secularism and Anti-Racism

Our battle on the cultural front is of fundamental importance. When
religious differences are used in order to create belligerent opposing sides, the huntfor
those who are different is deliberately sought. Ethnic cleansing is carried out. Cultures
retreat behind solid walls which are impregnated with the smell of blood.

The ostentatiously explicit attempts to encourage the clash between
Christianity and Islam must be met with the strongest opposition on our part together with
a determined reply involving the revival of secularism. We must get rid of the conviction
that membership of a religion is the culmination of the human, social and political
experience of individuals, as of organized societies. We must promote social integration
and the unity of class interests by demonstrating the futility of religion, if we wish to
follow objectives of citizenship and of the liberty of every individual independently of
geographic origin; if we want to lend weight to the concept of solidarity with the
exploited, independently of their professed religion.

5.5 Anti-Sexism

The hypocritical "discovery" of the dramatic conditions of
Afghan women and those of other Islamic countries has stirred up the do-gooders of the
so-called "West", who are now indignant regarding the imposition of the burqa
and regarding particular applications of Sharia law. That the suffering of Afghan women
should become a scandal to be eradicated after 10 years, and thereby a valid reason to go
to war, reveals the profound male-chauvinism which lies at the root of militarist
activity, for which the "liberation" of Afghan women from the Taleban oppression
constitutes the spoils of war. The condition of thousands of immigrant women who are
treated as slaves is not, however, an equally good motive for their liberation from the
oppression of our "homegrown Taleban" or exploiters of immigrants. As the Afghan
women’s organization RAWA has stated, they do not expect liberation by the Americans,
the Northern Alliance, or a restoration of the monarchy, without a real guarantee of
equality either at work, in public life or in private life. We must demystify every
attempt at exploiting the conditions of Afghan women in order to justify massacres and
destruction to the detriment of those same Afghan women and their children. We must
obtain the right of freedom of religion and freedom from religion. In every country of the
world.

5.6 Civilized Society

As during the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, we believe that it is
important that organized groups from civilized society exist outside and against war. We
must recognize in them the possibility of a social alternative and of international
solidarity. If it seems strange to talk about remnants of civilized society after
continuous conflict in a country which has been flattened by war for over 20 years, we
must encourage, valorize and give our solidarity to those groups in Afghanistan which are
trying to resist and develop and support social relations and to build an alternative,
beginning with the war emergency and the segregation of women. We must develop our
solidarity with the well-known Emergency initiative and the clandestine work of the RAWA
women’s group, and we must work towards developing our capacity to make known the
fact that between armed peace and economic-military war, we choose the struggle for
freedom, dignity and peace without exploitation.}

^{WITHDRAWAL OF THE ITALIAN CONTINGENT

CEASE FIRE

BLOCK THE SPREAD OF WAR

DEMILITARIZE THE AREA

MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT

AID AND SOLIDARITY TO THE REFUGEES

FREEDOM FOR AFGHAN WOMEN}

^{November 2001}}