About Afghanistan

[Rasoolpuri]

What is opinion of senior comrades about new situation of Afghnistan . Talban were pet dogs of America .Now he is killing his dogs oris it a real struggle for democracy.

[Janus]

Talban were pet dogs of America
How were they US lap dogs? They were the "pet dogs" of Pakistan.

There is no real struggle for democracy in Afghanistan, rather it is a conflict between US occupation forces and the allied gov. against a resurging Taliban movement.

[Phalanx]

Neither side is progressive, it's basically imperialists fighting an extreme right wing religious group. The ones we should support are the ones caught in the middle.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The government overthrown by the Islamacists (with U.S., Chinese, Pakistani and Saudi support) was progressive.

[tecumseh]

My position is not that i support the Taleban, but i am completely against this government which was put in place by the coalition. they were the reason the taleban gained so much support and are doing so again. So do not think i support the taleban.

What afghanistan needs is an alternative government, with no history of destruction in the country. For that the UN needs to take charge (unlike Iraq, they did support this invasion), defy the US and implement a formal democracy.

You cannot achieve any aspirations with the Current warlord government or the taleban.

[Phalanx]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 01, 2006 01:20 am
The government overthrown by the Islamacists (with U.S., Chinese, Pakistani and Saudi support) was progressive.
Yes, but that side no longer exists as an entity.

[Keyser]

The government overthrown by the Islamacists (with U.S., Chinese, Pakistani and Saudi support) was progressive.

I take it you are talking about the 1978-1992 pro-Soviet and statist socialist government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA).

Whilst I do not consider the PDPA regime to be a system that in any way was a working class revolution or a social and political system that gave full democracy to the exploited classes, the PDPA were by far the best government ever in Afghanistan's history.

As I am an anarcho-communist, you might ask why I believe that. Well from the point of view of improving material conditions, eradicating illiteracy, weakening the power of tribal warlords and chieftins and weakening the power of the islamists, the PDPA regime has so far been the only regime in Afghanistan to do that with any effort.

However, whatever the rights or wrongs of the PDPA, for most Afghani's, the PDPA were seen as puppets of the Soviet Union that could only maintain power at the expense of a Soviet military presence in Afghanistan. Because of that, the PDPA are more or less finished as a political and social force in the future of Afghanistan.

If a statist socialist movement emerges in Afghanistan again (I would think statist socialism/leninism/vanguardism has a better chance than any genuine communist movement at the moment in Afghanistan), then I would not be suprised if we see a growth in maoist movements such as the Afghanistan Liberation Organisation (ALO) or other such groups that have adopted the People's War strategy.


What afghanistan needs is an alternative government, with no history of destruction in the country. For that the UN needs to take charge (unlike Iraq, they did support this invasion), defy the US and implement a formal democracy.

No, what Afghanistan does not need is yet more imperialist 'nation building' by the UN.

It is delusional to think of the UN as some sort of neutral body that would benefit the demands and needs of the Afghan people. The UN is just a front organisation for global imperialism, headed by the five major imperialist powers, USA, France, Britain, Russia and China, that were on the winning side of WW2.

Look at the UN sanctioned and UN organised imperialist assult against Haiti, Bosnia and other countries to see that of all the things, the UN is the last thing Afghanistan needs.

[tecumseh]

^^^ I think you misunderstood me. I support UN help, but from the outside .. never did I or do I support soldiers occupying Afghan land. While I don't support the Taleban's political beliefs I do support their resistance against occupation forces and the warlord government.


Originally posted by Tatanka Iyotank
Neither side is progressive, it's basically imperialists fighting an extreme right wing religious group. The ones we should support are the ones caught in the middle.

Ok, sorry to say, but some of you sound seriously misinformed by Western media.


"The Taliban made some progress in three areas: centralizing the government, national security, and a de-weaponized Afghanistan. Another issue the Taliban addressed was drug issues. Some Afghanis supported the Taliban because they brought peace and subdued the ferocious people of Afghanistan."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taleban

[Keyser]

^^^ I think you misunderstood me. I support UN help, but from the outside .. never did I or do I support soldiers occupying Afghan land.

No, I understood you meant it as you have stated above. I still dont see how the UN (a collection of the most powerful capitalist and imperialist powers) can help. The UN needs to be done away with, just like the IMF, World Bank, WTO and NATO.


While I don't support the Taleban's political beliefs I do support their resistance against occupation forces and the warlord government.

Well you just contradict yourself by the above statement with the statement you made here:


"The Taliban made some progress in three areas: centralizing the government, national security, and a de-weaponized Afghanistan. Another issue the Taliban addressed was drug issues. Some Afghanis supported the Taliban because they brought peace and subdued the ferocious people of Afghanistan."

This is information about the Taleban prior to the US invasion of October 2001.

In other words you do support the Taleban as you consider them to be the 'best' and most 'stable' government of Afghanistan. Communists do not care about governmental stability or competence, we seek to destroy states and government due to the oppression and class exploitation they cause as agents of the capitalist class.

As for the Taleban's anti-drugs policy, that should be opposed without question, I'd rather an Afghan farmer make some money from poppy growing and have enough to support his family and maybe save himself and his family from starvation than having to have his crops taken away and the farmer starving due to the Taleban's backward and reactionary view on drug use.

The Taleban cannot be supported politically or in any other sense, they are as reactionary as the imperialist occupiers.


Ok, sorry to say, but some of you sound seriously misinformed by Western media.

I don't use the coporate media to inform me.

And it looks like you have been misinformed by islamist and faux anti-imperialist propaganda that spews out crap about how everything was just wonderful under those backward reactionary shits in the Taleban.

[tecumseh]

In other words you do support the Taleban as you consider them to be the 'best' and most 'stable' government of Afghanistan.


http://www.rawa.org/wom-view.htm

http://www.rawa.org/ai-women.htm#2

http://www.rawa.org/reports.htm

This site provides details far more deeper than CNN or FOX ever would. It knocks the taleban and clearly shows/ identifies the goverment approved warlords as criminals. Read the background of the pre taleban era.


The Taleban cannot be supported politically or in any other sense, they are as reactionary as the imperialist occupiers.

I support the Afghan resistance, if it so happens that the Taleban and Al Qaeda are for now the resistance of Afghanistan than so be it. A dead occupation soldier will never be able to kill more Afghan or Iraqis.


Communists do not care about governmental stability or competence

Maybe not, but believe you me the workers of Afghanistan were glad that the civil war ended and the corrupt warlords were no longer raping and massacring Afghans.


The Taleban cannot be supported politically or in any other sense, they are as reactionary as the imperialist occupiers.

The Taleban were far more progressive than the warlords (the current government) that ran Afghanistan before the invasion. If you think the Taleban is more reactionary than the warlords and druglords.. then i cannot change your opinion.

But if the Taleban comes back, it cannot be without the peoples support.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n06/burk01_.html

The key point is that, for many in Afghanistan, the Taliban are a great improvement on what went before. An Amnesty Report covering the (pre-Taliban) period from 1992 to 1994 was entitled 'Women in Afghanistan: A Human Rights Catastrophe'. For those who find it difficult to understand why there should be any sympathy for the Taliban the report makes challenging reading. Over that period, it says,

armed groups massacred defenceless women in their homes, or have brutally beaten and raped them. Scores of young women have been abducted and raped, taken as wives by commanders or sold into prostitution . . . Scores of women have . . . 'disappeared' and several have been stoned to death . . . The perpetrators are the main Mujahideen groups . . . As territory changes hands after long battles, an entire local population can be subjected to violent retaliatory punishments. The conquerors often celebrate by killing and raping women and looting property.

These days, rape - at least by strangers and soldiers - is relatively rare in Taliban-controlled areas. So is the widespread theft and abduction referred to in the report. The Taliban soldiers are on the whole well-behaved. Wrong-doers in the ranks are punished, often savagely, which wasn't the case among the Mujahideen groups who preceded them. In much of the country the dismal security situation has been turned round. There is a system of justice and rudimentary policing which, whatever its manifest flaws, does function. I once asked the owner of a roadside tea stall near the eastern town of Ghazni what he felt about the Taliban. 'Now you could leave a bar of gold in the street overnight and it would be safe,' he said.

The idea that the Taliban are a universally hated military regime ruling through fear and violence simply doesn't hold up. The occasional revolts are mostly to do with conscription, which is very unpopular. The repressive edicts that so outrage the West have long been the practice in most of rural Afghanistan, where 80 per cent of the population live. In the rural regions around the western city of Herat a year before the Taliban took control, there were, according to Save the Children UK, nearly 75,000 boys at school and fewer than 2000 girls. In the Afghan countryside women have never gone to school, left the village unaccompanied or chosen their husbands. There is no need to ban television - there aren't any sets. The 1994 Amnesty Report also says that 'women have been prevented from exercising several of their fundamental rights . . . to association, of expression and employment - by Mujahideen groups who consider such activities to be un-Islamic.' So you couldn't really say that the Taliban are innovators.


And it looks like you have been misinformed by islamist and faux anti-imperialist propaganda that spews out crap about how everything was just wonderful under those backward reactionary shits in the Taleban.

No, just what Western media has to offer .. including the imperialist HRW! :lol:

[Keyser]

This site provides details far more deeper than CNN or FOX ever would. It knocks the taleban and clearly shows/ identifies the goverment approved warlords as criminals. Read the background of the pre taleban era.

I am not saying that life in pre-Taleban Afghanistan was any better.

The first warlord era of 1992-1996 was one of great terror, much bloodshed, constant fighting amongst tribal based warlords, not to mention the great levels of poverty, hunger, homelessness and other lack of basic living needs.

However, the Taleban may have put an end to the factional strife of the tribal warlords, but do remember that the Taleban were themselves warlords. The only differences that made the Taleban unique from other warlord based groups was their ability to actually win the Afghan civil war and thus take over control of over 90% of Afghanistan as well as their methods of gaining cross tribal and cross regional support, by going above tribal/regional based loyalties and appealing to the one thing that all Afghans have in common, Islam.

I also know that the current US imperialist puppet government of Karzai is a collection of corrupt cronies who enrich themselves off international aid donations that were meant for the Afghan people and via the poppy harvest and trade. Most of these cronies are either warlords, ex-warlords or people associated with some of the warlords.

Karzai himself was a Taleban supporter in the 1990s, its all inter-connected.

What I am saying is that the people of Afghanistan will not be free under the US imperialist backed Karzai regime, the warlords or the Taleban. All of these political forces are reactionary and can only offer repression, poverty and regression to the Afghan people.


I support the Afghan resistance, if it so happens that the Taleban and Al Qaeda are for now the resistance of Afghanistan than so be it. A dead occupation soldier will never be able to kill more Afghan or Iraqis.

You have to ask the question of whether the Taleban/Al Qaeda are fighting for the Afghan people or for their own ends, as all evidence and a class analysis will point to the latter.

I have no sympathy for US/UK/NATO troops killed in Afghanistan or US/UK troops killed in Iraq. There is no draft, so those soldiers made the choice to fight for capitalism and imperialism.

However, if working class liberation is your objective, then the only side that can ever be supported is the working class and no other. The Taleban/Al Qaeda are not on the working class side and are bigots, backward reactionaries, fascistic and militantly anti-communist and anti-working class.

The only reason the Taleban/Al Qaeda fight the US imperialists is that they are resentful of the fact that the US is oppressing the Afghan people and not themselves. It is nothing more than a turf war of reactionary oppressors.

The death and destruction of both the US/UK imperialist armies and the Taleban and Islamist armies is the only path we should support.


Maybe not, but believe you me the workers of Afghanistan were glad that the civil war ended and the corrupt warlords were no longer raping and massacring Afghans.

But the Taleban are not much different in their oppression of the Afghan people.

They shoot or decapitated women who would not waer the oppressive burka, women who walked in the streets without a male relative etc...

They even have the backward Islamic rape laws which punish the rape victim and not the rapist.

Most if not all Afghan women will hate a return to the Taleban nightmare.


The Taleban were far more progressive than the warlords (the current government) that ran Afghanistan before the invasion. If you think the Taleban is more reactionary than the warlords and druglords.. then i cannot change your opinion.

No they weren't.

In terms of economic conditions, living standards and poverty, the Taleban and the warlords are on par with each other. The warlords are corrupt and use international aid for their own ends and the Taleban, though nowhere near as corrupt as the warlords, due to their backward ultra Islamist ideology don't have any reason to develop the economy or reduce poverty, should that weaken their vision for a 7th century Islamist 'utopia'.

Again, women face repression now under the warlords regime, but the Taleban were worse in that education was banned for women, the Taleban's policy was simply that women are to be like pets or animals, wholly owned and ruled by their male masters.

To claim the Taleban were better in their treatment of women than any other Afghan regime, past or present, is a show of a complete lack and losing tocuh of reality.

For women's rights, the best regime would have to be the PDPA regime of 1978-1992, it was the only time in Afghan history that women were at least treated as human beings and not as commodities or animals.


But if the Taleban comes back, it cannot be without the peoples support.

Again, try and start using class analysis and communist politics.

Just because a political movement has popular appeal does not make it progressive nor does it mean we should support them.

The German nazis, the Italian fascists, Franco's Spanish nationalists all had a degree of popular support, but that does not automatically mean we have to support them.

I'll agree at he moment that the Afghan people are fucked.

One the one side is warlordism with is raping, mass murder, corruption and loyalty to US imperialism and on the other side is the Taleban, with their oppressive laws, open and extreme hatred of women, Islamism and public executions.

Hopefully one day a genuine revolutionary movement will emerge and sweep away all the other crap that is making life hell for the Afghan people.