Over 11,000 Yemeni Children Have Been Killed or Injured Since 2015, Reports UNICEF

Carlos Lazo and a small band of Cubans are on a 1,300-mile pilgrimage from Miami to Washington, D.C., to end the U.S. blockade of Cuba. Despite the blistering summer heat and occasional death threats (including a trucker who tried to run them off the road), the marchers persist. Lazo’s group is called Puentes de Amor, Bridges of Love, and this grueling walkathon is certainly a labor of love. 

While right-wing Cubans in Miami call him “comunista,” Lazo has no time for ideology. He is neither for or against the Cuban government; he is for the Cuban people, the Cuban families. And he is disgusted by the cruelty of the U.S. blockade and by politicians who use the Cuban people as a political football—especially during this pandemic.

Lazo portrays Cuba and the U.S. as his parents—Cuba is his mother, the United States his father. He sees his job as trying to stop them from fighting and instead to embrace each other. “We try to unite people, whatever their ideology, religion, race or nationality,” Lazo told me. “The important thing is to take down walls that separate us and build bridges between our people.” 

Lazo and the marchers set off from Miami on June 27 and will arrive in Washington, D.C., on July 25. All along the journey, they have been meeting with community groups—black farmers, veterans, students—explaining their purpose and their demands. They are calling for a lifting of all restrictions on sending remittances to their families back home; the resumption of flights from the U.S., not only to Havana but to all major Cuban cities (right now U.S. planes can only land in Havana); the reopening of a fully staffed U.S. Embassy and Consulate in Havana instead of the skeletal staff that exists now; a restart to the program of family reunification that Trump suspended in 2017; the granting to U.S. citizens of the right to travel freely to Cuba; and robust economic relations, as well as scientific and cultural exchanges. Despite candidate Biden’s campaign promises to revert to Obama’s openings, the Biden administration insists that its Cuba policy is still “under review.” In practice, it has continued the brutal Trump agenda.

You couldn’t invent a better person than Carlos Lazo—a gregarious high school teacher/veteran who also plays guitar, sings and dances like a Cuban rock star—to lead a movement to change U.S.-Cuba policy. His trajectory reads like a movie script. The son of a cigar maker and a housewife, Lazo grew up in the small fishing village of Jaimanitas, west of Havana, and spent the first 28 years of his life there. After his mother emigrated to the United States, Lazo dreamed of following her. He first tried to leave in 1988 when he and his friend rigged up a makeshift raft. After two days adrift in the ocean, they were picked up by the Cuban Coast Guard. Lazo was thrown in jail, where he spent an entire year for illegally trying to leave the island. 

Undeterred, in 1991 he tried again. After four precarious days on a rickety raft with six others, this time they were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard and allowed to enter the United States.

Lazo spent a few years in Miami working in restaurants, delivering pizzas and driving trucks, but moved to Seattle in 1998 to seek more economic opportunities. There he joined the Washington National Guard and studied nursing. When the United States invaded Iraq, he was sent as a combat medic. He participated in the battle of Fallujah and was awarded a bronze star for helping to save lives.

But in 2005, when this decorated veteran was on leave and tried to visit his two sons living in Cuba, he discovered that the Bush administration wouldn’t allow him to go. This was a turning point in his life, when Lazo realized that the U.S. blockade, which has existed in one form or another since the 1960s, was hurting both the Cuban people and Cubans in the United States who wanted to visit and help their families back home. 

So Lazo began speaking out. In 2007, he testified before the U.S. Senate and met with more than 100 members of Congress. He was featured on CNN and MSNBC and in national newspapers. 

When Obama became president and started normalizing relations with Cuba, Lazo thought his political work was over. He got a teaching degree, became a high school Spanish teacher, and threw himself into building a unique cultural exchange program that took his students to Cuba. The “profe,” as he is known, taught his students to sing Cuban love songs and dance salsa, winning the hearts of their Cuban hosts. He called this project the Factory of Dreams.  

These glorious exchanges, six in total, came to a crashing halt when Trump entered the White House. Trump tried to please right-wing Cubans in Miami by reversing Obama’s openings and adding 242 additional coercive measures designed to torpedo the Cuban economy. 

While the pandemic left a trail of pain and death around the world, Trump insisted on restricting family remittances to Cuba, stopping fuel shipments that supplied electricity to Cuban homes and hospitals, and sabotaging Cuban medical brigades that were helping to save lives around the world. “The planet cried out for solidarity and cooperation,” Lazo fumed, “but Trump responded by trying to suffocate the Cuban people.”

Lazo decided to take action. Despite the raging pandemic in the summer of 2020, he and four family members got on their bikes and rode more than 3,000 miles from Seattle to Washington, D.C., to urge Donald Trump and Congress to lift the blockade. Lazo livestreamed their voyage on Facebook, gaining an enormous following along the way.

Lazo’s cross-country trip inspired a group of Cubans in Miami to begin their own caravan of bicycles and cars on the last Sunday of every month. Starting with just 11 bicycles last July, the Miami caravan has grown to more than a hundred vehicles and bicycles going down Calle Ocho in Little Havana. Carlos teamed up with Miami YouTube personality Jorge Medina (El Proteston) to galvanize hundreds of Cubans in the United States. For the older generation of Miami Cubans who, at great personal risk, have been proposing normal relations and opposing the right-wing “haters” of the Cuban government since the 1959 revolution, this infusion of energy is a thrilling development.

Inspired by the success in Miami, there are now monthly caravans taking place in some 30 cities in the United States and scores more throughout the world, including in Cuba itself. Clearly, Lazo’s rejection of hatred and his commitment to building “bridges of love” reflect the sentiments of a growing number of U.S.-based Cubans and their allies.

When the marchers arrive in the nation’s capital, they will be greeted by hundreds of supporters, including U.S.-based Cubans flying all the way from Miami. Lazo plans to stay in Washington to meet with members of Congress and present the Biden administration with a petition signed by more than 25,000 people calling on him to build “bridges of love” between the two countries—just as President Obama started to do when he was in the White House.

Lazo’s pilgrimage shows his understanding that opponents of the blockade in the Cuban community need allies among broader layers of people–the farmers, students, church people, truck drivers, etc.—that he is meeting on the way. He believes the bridges of love go both ways because many groups, besides Cubans, have an interest in ending the blockade. These include farmers who want to sell their crops; tourists eager to enjoy Cuba’s nearby beauty, culture, and history; and scientists and public health officials seeking to collaborate with the island’s advanced medical system and biotech industries. In his pilgrimage, he wants to give a voice to these allies as well. 

The mushrooming of caravans across the country, the increasing number of city council resolutions against the blockade, the recent vote of the Longshore Union to condemn it, the $400,000 raised by groups sound the country to send syringes for Cuba’s COVID vaccinations—all show a growing feeling that it’s past time for the Biden administration to re-examine its cynical, electoral calculations in continuing Trump’s restrictions on Cuba. 

Lazo is not naive. He is under no illusions that his trek to Washington, D.C., will be enough to change Biden’s policies. But his philosophy is both simple and profound: “Everything you do to make the world better helps to make the world better,” he says. And whether it’s a cross-country bike trip or a 1,300-mile trek in the summer heat, Lazo takes these bold actions with so much joy, love and enthusiasm that others can’t help but follow his lead. 

Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK, is author of several books on Cuba, including No Free Lunch: Food and Revolution in Cuba Today. 

Editor’s Note: This article is the first in a series Toward Freedom has launched to examine the real impact and reasons for U.S. “humanitarian interventions.”

From the U.S. military intervention launched under the banner of democracy and human rights to restored warlords and the resuscitated Taliban regime, Afghan women have never stopped fighting for their rights.

When Taliban forces entered Kabul on August 15, appearing to have taken control of Afghanistan two weeks before the United States was set to complete its troop withdrawal, shock and fear for women’s fate under the Islamist group’s repressive rule quickly multiplied inside the country and globally.

After nearly 20 years of a U.S.-led coalition’s presence, a costly two-decade war, the very force the United States had tried to push out of power, in the name of its “War on Terror,” took over again. This time it occurred with stunning rapidity, in the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden’s hasty, chaotic military withdrawal.

With the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals were abandoned at the mercy of the Taliban, amid concern the fundamentalist movement would re-impose its hard-line interpretation of Islamic law on women and girls.

But securing women’s rights was used from the beginning to justify the U.S. military intervention. The Biden administration’s irresponsible pull-out in tandem with the swift, untroubled Taliban return speaks volumes about Washington’s lack of interest to secure respect for human rights and improve women’s lives. Humanitarian interventions have been used to deploy U.S. troops and drones in Iraq, Libya, Syria and other countries. As a consequence, 1 million people have been killed and an estimated 38 million have been forced to become refugees.

 

Condemning Humanitarian Interventions

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), the oldest feminist organization in Afghanistan, stated in its response to the Taliban takeover: “It is a joke to say values like ‘women’s rights,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘nation-building,’ etc., were part of the U.S./NATO aims in Afghanistan!”

The women’s association mentioned the United States’ geostrategic motives for its invasion, namely causing regional instability to encircle its rival powers, China and Russia in particular, and to undermine their economies via regional wars.

“Right from the start, RAWA members have been saying that freedom can’t be brought through bombs, war and violence,” Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission (AWM), a U.S.-based organization that funds RAWA’s work, told Toward Freedom. “How can they liberate women while they’re killing their husbands, brothers and fathers?”

Afghan women have long known that the U.S.-staged war on terrorism—and any foreign meddling—was not going to make their country safer. Women took the brunt of the backlash of war, military invasion and, again, today’s uncertain aftermath.

“[Afghan women] have always rejected outside interference, and maintained that Afghans need to fight for their freedom from inside,” Kolhatkar said.

For decades, active women have been at the forefront of opposing fundamentalism, warlordism and imperialism in Afghanistan.

Leading political activist and human-rights advocate Malalai Joya publicly denounced the presence of warlords and war criminals in the Afghan parliament in 2003 while serving as a member of parliament (MP), which resulted in her dismissal. An outspoken critic of the United States and NATO, she has continued to denounce the 20-year U.S./Western occupation. She has condemned U.S.-led drone attacks and bombings, clandestine raids carried out by U.S. and Afghan special forces into civilian homes, all of which have killed thousands of Afghans.

Between 2001 and 2020, more than 46,000 civilians were killed and 5.9 million Afghans displaced as a result of the war’s ongoing violence.

 

U.S. Brings Taliban Back to Power

Activists at the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), an NGO launched in the mid-1990s, have criticized the United States for allegedly bribing and empowering warlords, then resuscitating the Taliban’s power in the 2020 U.S.-led negotiations in Doha, which translated into replacing one fundamentalist regime in Afghanistan with another.

“I do not understand the United States for undoing and now redoing the Taliban in Afghanistan, whose ruling will affect women’s lives the most, which will be ruined yet again,” prominent human-rights activist Mahbooba Seraj, member of AWN, said in a interview with TRT World.

Talking to Toward Freedom, Alia Rasoully, an Afghan based in the United States who founded WISE Afghanistan, an organization that aims to provide women access to health and education, underlined how the Doha talks were conducted solely in the United States’ interest. She said many Afghans are not aware of the agreement’s details.

“Afghan women feel betrayed,” Rasoully said. “Although some women were included in the negotiations, none of their demands for basic human and Islamic rights are being met today.”

Spozhmay Maseed, a U.S.-based Afghan rights activist, deplored the seemingly unconcerned U.S. pull-out. “It was shocking to everyone,” she told Toward Freedom. “U.S. forces were combating terrorists for 20 years, today they’re dealing with them. Who were they fighting then? What was that fight for?”

RAWA member Salma, whose real name must be concealed to protect her security, relayed similar concerns to Toward Freedom.

“The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 was a military operation orchestrated by the CIA that brought in Northern Alliance puppet leaders, who are as extremist and misogynist as the Taliban, and painted them as ‘democratic’ and ‘liberal,’” she said.

“What’s the result of these 20 years?” Salma asked. “[The United States] spent more than $2 trillion on the war to bring back the same Taliban, and it turned the country into a corrupt, drug-mafia and unsafe place, especially for women.”

The façade of democracy the United States had poured trillions of dollars into maintaining was lifted when former President Ashraf Ghani abandoned the presidential palace on August 15 by reportedly dashing onto a helicopter with close to $200 million in tow.

“How breakable that ‘democracy’ was, and how rotten the U.S.-backed puppet government was!” Salma asserted.

 

The Work of RAWA

On its website, RAWA has documented through its reports, photos and videos the horrific conditions facing Afghan women at the hands of the mujahideen and the Taliban, as well as the destruction and bloodshed during the U.S. occupation, which was rarely reported in the media.

“This indigenous women’s movement had long been trying to draw international attention to the atrocities against their people, in particular the ultra-woman-hating acts they were witnessing,” AWM’s Kolhatkar stressed. “It was only after September 11, when the world discovered there were terrible things happening to women in Afghanistan.”

Unlike many other Afghans, RAWA members have stayed, striving to give voice to the deprived women of Afghanistan in the struggle for women’s rights.

RAWA, which was established in 1977 as an independent political organization of Afghan women struggling for women’s rights, is driven by the belief that only a democratic, secular government can ensure security, independence and equality among Afghan people. It became involved in the struggle for resistance following the Soviet intervention called for by the then-socialist government of Afghanistan in 1979. Over the last four decades, RAWA spoke out against the anti-Soviet resistance (known as mujahideen) in the 1980s, fought against the Taliban regime in the mid-1990s, denounced the role of the Pakistani state in creating the Taliban and has rejected the U.S. occupation of the last 20 years.

The women’s organization has been involved in various social and political activities to include literacy classes, schools for girls and boys in villages and remote areas, health and income-generation projects for women to help them financially, and political agitation. It has also worked with refugee Afghan women and children in Pakistan, running nursing, literacy and vocational training courses. In 1981, it launched a bilingual magazine in Persian and Pashto, Payam-e-Zan (Woman’s Message), spreading social and political awareness among Afghan women.

Due to its pro-democracy, pro-secularist and anti-fundamentalist stance, RAWA has always operated as a clandestine organization, including in the last two decades under the U.S. occupation and the so-called “democratic government,” which it never recognized.

Using pseudonyms, concealing their identities, turning their homes into office spaces, often changing locations to avoid attention, its members have been active in different areas across Afghanistan. They would run underground schools for girls and women where they would use their burqa as a way to hide their books, and disseminate copies of Woman’s Message, secretly aiming to raise awareness among women of their rights and change their minds.

As an unregistered organization carrying out political work and home-schooling, if authorities found about its existence and illicit activity they could react punitively with any member caught up.

Since the assassination of its founder, Meena Kamal, the feminist association has been working more underground as anyone openly identified as member would risk being arrested or even killed. Despite it becoming increasingly dangerous to organize, the movement continues to stand.

“This is the time our women need us the most in Afghanistan,” Salma said. “We have to continue to be the voice of the voiceless who are here.”

 

Women’s Rights at What Cost?

Afghan women saw improvement in their lives over the past 20 years in terms of access to education, healthcare and employment, as well as economic, social and political empowerment. But the gap between urban centers and rural areas never really narrowed. In rural areas, where it is estimated 76 percent of Afghanistan’s women reside, women still rely on men in their families for permission to attend school and work. Girls are typically allowed to have primary or secondary education, then their families proceed with arranged marriages. In 2020, as little as 29.8 percent of women could read and write.

“Progress was slower in rural areas,” Rasoully remarked. “We worked hard in advocating to convince parents that their girls could safely go to school in a very culturally appropriate environment that they were comfortable with.”

She called for greater efforts to address the urban-rural divide, noting the international community made the mistake of taking an inequitable approach to offering educational opportunities to Afghan girls, as it directed its programs at young women in cities.

In her view, the insecurity brought on by the war into rural communities was a major impediment that kept girls out of school and prevented women from working.

Many villages experienced for years the devastation of heavy fighting between the Taliban, foreign militaries, government forces and local militias. The loss of husbands, brothers and fathers to the war further compromised women’s ability to go about everyday life.

Salma made clear progress in women’s status in the past two decades has been the result of a “natural process.” During that time, Afghan women acquired basic freedoms that had been withheld from them under the Taliban regime. But the foreign military presence could not be credited for that.

Kolhatkar specified that while the United States had boots on the ground in Afghanistan and it supported women’s rights on paper, the United States allowed the opposite in practice by “working with fundamentalists every step of the way.”

She explicitly said the issue of women’s rights was never a concern for Washington. Rather, it was a pretext to make its long, protracted occupation “palatable.”

“RAWA had been warning the Americans since the early phase of the invasion not to embrace the Taliban, nor the warlords,” Kolhatkar, AWM’s joint director, reminded. “It shouldn’t at all surprise us that the U.S. administration finally left Afghanistan, with misogynist hardliners in charge once again.”

With the Taliban back in control on August 15, a wave of civil resistance mainly was initiated by Afghan women. The protests have built momentum, hitting different parts of the war-ravaged country in the last month.

Further, a new generation has grown up in a country that is connected to the rest of the world through the Internet. That has increased political and social awareness among the general public, especially among young people.

Today, groups of women—small and large—are disobeying Taliban restrictions, protesting in Herat, Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif and other Afghan cities to demand their fundamental rights. They are bravely defying the extremist group, refusing the idea of returning to the grim days that women lived through.

Under the Taliban’s previous rule (1996-2001), the Islamist militants enforced strict rules on women and girls, forcing them to cover their bodies from head to toe, prohibiting them from leaving home without a male family member, and banning them from going to school or work. If they did not abide by the rules, they could face severe punishment, such as imprisonment, torture or execution.

Rasoully expressed concern that the progress made by 35 million Afghans throughout the last two decades, especially young women and girls, may go to waste. She personally mentored girls in medical school, in areas like Kandahar, over the last five years. 

“But today, we are being told girls cannot go to school beyond sixth grade,” she said. “This will take us back to the stone ages.”

Maseed, the U.S.-based Afghan activist, insisted today’s Afghan women are better educated and more politically aware than in the 1990s, and will keep pushing for their rights.

“If women go backward, they think it’s better to come out on the streets and be killed than to follow these regressive rules and die inside every day,” the activist affirmed.

Resisting oppression with exceptional resilience—even under the new Taliban rule—they intend to keep up their struggle. They also are appealing to the international community not to grant recognition to the Taliban as a legitimate political actor.

In the past weeks, Afghan associations and supporters in the diaspora have joined Afghan women’s calls to refuse to recognize the Taliban. But they also have criticized the U.S. role in creating a disaster, at both political and humanitarian levels. And it is clear from U.S. machinations that ordinary Afghans will suffer starvation with recent efforts at keeping the Taliban from accessing funds stored in foreign banks.

“Perhaps things were better for many Afghan women under a U.S.-supported government, but it is also the United States’ violent intervention, which has led to the situation in Afghanistan today,” Nida Kirmani, a feminist sociologist and professor at Pakistan’s Lahore University of Management Sciences, wrote in a tweet. “One cannot disconnect the two.”

 

Using women’s rights again as a means of framing US imperialism. Perhaps things were better for many Afghan women under a US-supported government, but it is also the US’s violent intervention, which has led to the situation in Afghanistan today. One cannot disconnect the two. https://t.co/RYNX9COIvL

— Nida Kirmani (@NidaKirmani) September 11, 2021

Alessandra Bajec is a freelance journalist specializing in West Asia and North Africa. Between 2010 and 2011, she lived in Palestine. She was based in Cairo from 2013 to 2017, and since 2018 has been based in Tunis.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Workers World.

Dozens of Bronx public school parents, teachers, students and community activists gathered on March 20, the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, to oppose a military recruitment fair, hosted by U.S. House Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Adriano Espaillat, at Renaissance High School in the Bronx. The grassroots Bronx Anti-War Coalition organized the demonstration.

The protesters aimed to educate students and parents about the violence and dangers that Black, Brown and Indigenous youth face entering the military. “A third of women in the military experience sexual harassment and assault,” said Richie Merino, a Bronx public school teacher and community organizer. “The rates are even higher for women of color. We demand justice for the families of Vanessa Guillén and Ana Fernanda Basaldua Ruiz,” two 20-year-old Latinas who were sexually assaulted and killed after speaking up at Fort Hood U.S. Army base in Texas.

Outside the AOC-endorsed military recruitment fair, Mohammed Latifu of the Bronx spoke to a group of community members. The group had gathered in memory of Latifu’s 21-year-old brother, Abdul Latifu, who was murdered on Jan. 10 at Fort Rucker, a U.S. Army base in Alabama. Abdul had been in the Army for only five months when he was bludgeoned to death with a shovel by another soldier.

Through tears, Mohammed shared how he and his family have been kept in the dark by military investigators and still await answers. He said their parents can’t sleep at night due to the senseless murder of their son Abdul.

“We really want to hear what happened,” Latifu said. “What took place? What transpired? Until today, no answers. No phone calls. We still don’t have any updates. Anybody who was thinking about enlisting their kid in the military, I think you better think again. Don’t do it. I wouldn’t dare ask my kid’s friends or anybody to join the military.”

Outside the @aoc sponsored U.S. military recruitment event at low-income public high school in the Bronx, we invited Mohammed Latifu to speak, who is seeking justice for his 21yo brother, Abdul Latifu, who was murdered in Jan at Fort Rucker, a US Army base in AL #JusticeForLatifu pic.twitter.com/29xA7VZaTY

— U.S./NATO = State Sponsors of Terrorism (@bxcommie) March 21, 2023

‘They’re Killing Their Own’

“They say they ‘protect’ the country,” Latifu continued. “They’re killing their own. They’re molesting these women that go over there. These kids, young men and women that go over there, they’re sexually harassed, and then they kill them and try to cover it up.

“They’ll tell you, ‘sorry for what happened, our condolences.’ No, keep your condolences! We want answers. What we really want is justice — justice for everybody who has had to endure this and their families,” Latifu concluded.

Brx Greens join Brx Antiwar activists to protest against Rep. AOC & Espaillat Military Fair at Bronx Renaissance High School 3/20/23 @gpny @gppeaceaction @GPUSBlackCaucus @gaijingirl2004 @JosBtrigga pic.twitter.com/aNP9CBzM5u

— Bronx Green Party (@Brx_Greens) March 22, 2023

Outside the event, representatives from IFCO (Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization)/Pastors for Peace informed students about alternative ways to “travel and see the world” without the military. They spoke about how to apply to the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Cuba and receive a free medical degree. Chants of “Cuba Sí, Bloqueo No!” broke out in the crowd.

Claude Copeland Jr., a Bronx teacher and member of About Face: Veterans Against the War, shared his experiences as a victim of the poverty draft. He spoke about how recruiters pitched the military as the only way to advance economically and secure safe, independent housing. They never told him about alternatives or other options. If you have no resources, “you have to sign your life away,” he said.

Community members criticized Ocasio-Cortez for abandoning her antiwar campaign promises to oppose predatory recruitment tactics by U.S. military recruiters, who target young, low-income Black and Latinx children.

“Only three years ago,” Merino said, “AOC introduced an amendment to prohibit military recruiters from targeting kids as young as 12 through online gaming. She understands the U.S. military preys on vulnerable, impressionable kids. For AOC to now use her celebrity status to headline a high school military recruitment event, in the Bronx, signals that she has turned her back on the Black, Brown and migrant working-class community that elected her into office.”

“We don’t want our children to train to kill other poor, Black and Brown people like themselves. The best thing we can do now is to grow the movement to completely remove police and military recruiters from our schools,” Merino concluded.