Tariq Ali

‘Operation Enduring Disaster’

Sunday, 16 November 2008

‘Operation Enduring Disaster’ by Tariq Ali for TomDispatch, November 16, 2008

Afghanistan has been almost continuously at war for 30 years, longer than both World Wars and the American war in Vietnam combined. Each occupation of the country has mimicked its predecessor. A tiny interval between wars saw the imposition of a malignant social order, the Taliban, with the help of the Pakistani military and the late Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister who approved the Taliban takeover in Kabul.

Over the last two years, the U.S./NATO occupation of that country has run into serious military problems. Given a severe global economic crisis and the election of a new American president—a man separated in style, intellect, and temperament from his predecessor–the possibility of a serious discussion about an exit strategy from the Afghan disaster hovers on the horizon. The  …

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‘The American War Moves to Pakistan’

Tuesday, 16 September 2008

‘The American War Move to Pakistan’ by Tariq Ali for TomDispatch, September 16, 2008

The decision to make public a presidential order of last July authorizing American strikes inside Pakistan without seeking the approval of the Pakistani government ends a long debate within, and on the periphery of, the Bush administration. Senator Barack Obama, aware of this ongoing debate during his own long battle with Hillary Clinton, tried to outflank her by supporting a policy of U.S. strikes into Pakistan. Senator John McCain and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin have now echoed this view and so it has become, by consensus, official U.S. policy.

Its effects on Pakistan could be catastrophic, creating a severe crisis within the army and in the country at large. The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are opposed to the U.S. presence in the region,  …

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From the archive

  • ‘Literature and Market Realism’
    May 1, 1993

    ‘Literature and Market Realism’ by Tariq Ali for New Left Review, May-Jun 1993

    These are strange times. Capitalism, crippled by its own contradictions—there are thirty million people out of work in the OECD countries alone—is nonetheless triumphant. From New York to Beijing, via Moscow and Vladivostok, you can eat the same junk food, watch the same junk on television and, increasingly, read the same junk novels. In the newly marketized counties of Eastern and Central Europe, a book can be consumed just like a McDonald’s hamburger. Indigestion and an excess of wind are no longer a preserve of the stomach. Just as the rival hamburger concerns advertise their respective wares, so the giant publishing concerns of North America and Britain buy authors and exhibit them like cattle. Potential bestsellers are auctioned by a new breed of literary agent.  …

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  • ‘Pakistan will not forget’
    October 13, 2005

    ‘Pakistan will not forget’ by Tariq Ali for The Guardian, October 12, 2005

    Why have US, German and British forces in Afghanistan not been mobilised to save lives?

    The scale of the disaster has traumatised the entire country—or perhaps not quite. Here in Lahore a group of people collecting funds for earthquake relief were apprehended and charged. They were amassing money for themselves. Even in the midst of devastation, life goes on. The global media have descended on the country, their reports repeating the same images and the same banal comments every few minutes. Soon they will move on, so that when they are really needed, to monitor relief efforts and reconstruction or keep watch on the funds, they will no longer be there. The citizens of the west will also forget. But Pakistan will never be able  …

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  • ‘The ignoble Nobel’
    December 13, 2010

    ‘The ignoble Nobel’ by Tariq Ali for the Guardian, December 7, 2002

    On Tuesday, former US president Jimmy Carter will fly to Oslo and receive the Nobel Peace Prize from the unassuming bicycling monarch of Norway. Why him? Why now? And what is the real aim of the peace prize?

    When it was first established in 1900, the Nobel committee clearly thought it should be awarded to people who really did believe in peaceful solutions and non-violence. Accordingly, in 1901, the first brace of recipients were Jean Henry Dumont, the Swiss founder of the Red Cross, and Frédéric Passy, the French dreamer who founded the International League for a Permanent Peace. Similar recipients were sought and found over the next four years.

    A rearguard action must have been mounted soon after, because in 1906 the prize was awarded to  …

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