(Mainichi)

       About a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, on Saturday, Oct. 13, 2001, Japan's House of Representatives convened a special committee session. Tokyo was at the time rushing to amend Japanese law to allow the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to support the U.S. military's anti-terrorism operations.

       Among the military commentators and other experts invited to provide input at the committee was Dr. Tetsu Nakamura. In 1983, Nakamura founded the nongovernmental organization Peshawar-kai, which dug wells and built water channels in Afghanistan to open up new farmland there. It was also doing medical work in neighboring Pakistan.

       Nakamura said of the situation in Afghanistan, "What we're worried about is famine." He added that "nothing good, but certainly harm" would come of sending the SDF to the country to tackle terrorism.

       His comments were met with derisive laughter from the assembled lawmakers, perhaps because they thought him disconnected from real world events. One ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) member wanted Nakamura to retract his "no good, but certainly harm" comment, but he pushed back, saying, "While all Japan is under a kind of information control, all I did was state my sincere views."

       Six days before the committee meeting, the U.S. had begun bombing Afghanistan. Nakamura took issue with the simplistic narrative of "American justice vs. Taliban evil." For him, what was needed to prevent terrorism was to reduce enmity, and this could not be done through military force.

       "Being slapped down like 'bastards' will only stoke people's desire for revenge," he said.

       Being a doctor, Nakamura used surgery as a metaphor to describe counter-terrorism measures by military force. Behind chaos and destruction in a country, he said, were the deeper ailments of lack of education and health care, of poverty and hunger. To prevent these, one needed humanitarian aid to improve conditions. He believed these could help prevent the need for "surgery," which should be the last resort.

       According to recent reports from the World Food Programme and other organizations, Afghanistan is falling deeper into hunger. They say that concerns over the food situation there are serious, due to continuing drought and an increasing number of refugees caused by conflicts, while the coronavirus pandemic is exacerbating food price inflation and unemployment.

       It has been nearly 20 years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. In that time, there has been no improvement on famine and poverty, while the shattered Taliban regained its strength, eventually retaking almost the entire country. The U.S. military, the world's best "surgeon," could not heal what ails Afghanistan.

       Japan's pacifist Constitution means it cannot become a "surgeon" in the same way as the United States. And so, Japan's contributions to world stability and anti-terror must come on the preventative side, as a physician.

       Dr. Nakamura was murdered by militants in Afghanistan two years ago. Now, as the Taliban returns to power, how should Japan treat that country? There is a valuable answer to that question in Nakamura's words, that drew such scornful laughter in Japan's halls of Diet some 20 years ago.

       (Japanese original by Takayasu Ogura, Editorial Writer)

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