What happened to Afghanistan in the 80s?

[Raúl Duke]

Recently, I've been seeing mentions (in movies, newspapers, my textbooks) of the past Civil War in Afghanistan that involved the USSR...

Most accounts I hear are that the Russians invaded Afghanistan and the US supported the Afghanis (i.e. the Taliban, etc. Although they don't mention that out-loud.).

Although I read a different more credible account in which what occur was that the state was a pro-Soviet state and they were facing insurrection/civil war with other, mostly fundamentalist, groups. Since they were friends with the USSR they called for their aid and thus they went in to help.

I would finally like to know: Which actually happened there?

(Although it's funny that the Reagen called them "freedom fighters", the taliban, which are the same people Bush fought/fighting now with and called them "evil", "tyrannical"/oppresive", etc. It's also sad that the RAWA got hit hard by those fundamentalists...yet I heard they still exist.)

[Vendetta]

(Although it's funny that the Reagen called them "freedom fighters", the taliban, which are the same people Bush fought/fighting now with and called them "evil", "tyrannical"/oppresive", etc. It's also sad that the RAWA got hit hard by those fundamentalists...yet I heard they still exist.)

That's just the progression of politics.

The Reds did the same with Makho, the Americans with the French, etc, etc.

[Philosophical Materialist]

The US destablised the Afghan state, forcing the USSR to aid and military intervene in Afghanistan. Of course the West presented the conflict as "imperialism" on behalf of the Soviet Union. Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted later that he planned it as a trap for the Soviet Union, as their "Vietnam."

The US armed and trained reactionary insurgents to fight the Soviet Union, but later reaped their later losses at the hands of these groups.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

See: Afghanistan’s Saur Revolution of 1978, and the U.S.-backed counterrevolution (http://freepeoplesmovement.org/ry/rys7a.html)

[Raúl Duke]

Thanks everyone, especially CDL and his source.

[Davie zepeda]

i read a book on how to bring a super power to it's knee's and yes it was pro soviet state the united state's wanted to bring the soviets into a direct fight knowing a military defeat would destroy Russia in it's trouble times.Also the afghan government represent something that most radical Muslim did not like freedoms to do which one wished and to a certain degree separating church from state which they really hated .They allowed certain rights to certain groups basically radical Islam did not like the idea of women and men being equal nor homosexuals and other things.so the radicals made a pact with the united states and this how we got alqead and other radicals
like malcome x said chickens coming home to roost .

[RNK]

Accounts of the Soviet Union's involvement are dubious at best. Some say the Afghani government was revolutionary and progressive and that they invited the Soviet Union in to help fight radicals backed by the US. Others claim the Afghani government was nothing more than a military tribunal put in power after several key Generals launched a coup, and that the USSR's involvement was nothing more than another geopolitical, social-imperialist move to ensure the survival of a friendly regime.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The latter are incorrect.

[RNK]

I'm glad you put so much thought into that. They must obviously have been wrong, now that CdL has declared it so.

[Die Neue Zeit]

In any event, I am siding with those who supported the (albeit flawed) Soviet intervention. Those "principled" comrades who sided with the Chinese, Americans, Saudis, etc. haven't learned the lessons of the Kornilov coup attempt and the absence of Bolshevik non-action. :(

[Sorry, Rosa, but in spite of your excellent anti-dialectics, your allegiance to historical materialism is rather dubious at best.]

[RNK]

I'd tend to agree, however, given what occured, I fail to see how its in any way more supportable than the various American "interventions" that occured throughout the Cold War.

Because in the end, the Soviet involvement became little more than the Soviet Union engineering the Afghan government into a puppet state. KGB agents were planted throughout the government and anytime a leader came to power, in any way, they were simply off'd and replaced. And this was not a single occurance; this happened several times throughout the 1980s until the eventual Soviet withdrawl.

Ontop of that, the nature of the PDPA's rise to power is concerning to say the least. Since when are revolutionary movements ushered in through a military coup and subsequent junta? And since when does "progressive intervention" come on the heels of assassinations and governmental engineering?

The saddest part about the whole affair was US involvement and the inability of genuinely revolutionary forces (who were suppressed by the PDPA) to overcome the hegemony on "oppression" that the religious radicals held. There are many cases of revolutionary Marxist-Leninist groups being suppressed by the pro-Soviet government; many of them subsequently blurred the lines between progressive resistence and jihadism and in any case were finished off by the Taliban.

Another often-held belief is that all or even the majority of the resistence against the Soviets were from religious radicals. While it's true CIA-funded mujahadeen played a large role, there were also a large amount of legitimate progressive forces fighting the Soviet invasion and occupation. It is similar, in a way, to modern-day Iraq; we all know there are radical islamists fighting the occupation but there are also progressive, democratic and worker's resistence movements, just as there was in Afghanistan in the 80s. Shola e Jawid and the Progressive Youth Front are a good example of this; by all accounts they were crushed and abolished by the PDPA, and this is prior to the intervention of islamists and the Soviet Union.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I'm glad you put so much thought into that. They must obviously have been wrong, now that CdL has declared it so.

Actually, I provided a source in this thread, as well as many others in other threads around the board.

For instance, there's this post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1070957&postcount=33), which is in part a direct refutation of a similar incorrect assertion you made.

You don't have to take my word for it. The facts are out there for anyone to find.

[RNK]

That was a good read, but it didn't really contain any useful, worthwhile information, just attempts to show how the "coup" wasn't a "coup" but a revolution, and various other repeated instances of referring to the situation as "revolutionary". "Saur Revolution", "revolutionary Afghanistan" -- however, the post doesn't make any mention of the various assassinations which plagued "Revolutionary Afghanistan", nor the soviet Union's involvement in these assassinations, nor the frequent re-shuffling of governmental positions, nor the suppression wrought by the 'revolutionary' government against progressive and revolutionary organizations immediately after their 'Saur revolution', nor the class makeup of the resistence against the "revolutionary" government.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Actually it does talk about the assassinations, (lack of) USSR involvement and "re-shuffling":

"Afghan Marxists have claimed that one of their countrymen, Hafizullah Amin, while on visits to the U.S., had been converted by the CIA and became their agent in the Taraki government. He worked his way to the top, and, as defence minister, in September, 1979, carried out a coup, took over the government, and had Taraki killed. All his loyal supporters were killed, jailed, or exiled. He then proceeded to undermine and discredit the Marxist government. He enacted draconian laws against the Muslim clergy, to purposefully further alienate them. Progressive reforms were halted and thousands of people were jailed."

"Meanwhile, the CIA's trained and armed mujahedeen came in by the thousands to attack parts of the country. In a matter of three months, Amin had essentially destroyed the Marxist government and had planned to surrender to the mujahedeen, and become the president of a fundamentalist Islamic state. But at the end of December, 1979, Amin was overthrown by the remnants of Taraki supporters, and, under the leadership of Babrak Karmal (who had been in exile in the U.S.S.R.), they invited the U.S.S.R. to send in a contingent of troops to help ward off the well-armed mujahedeen invaders, many being foreign mercenaries."

And the link I posted earlier in this thread does describe the class makeup of the counterrevolutionaries (Regan and Islamists refer to them as "the resistance"):

"The reactionary "mujahedin" (or holy warriors – the name that the bands of the khans, mullahs and Islamic clergy gave themselves) that lead the counterrevolution sought to preserve their positions, which rested upon a backwards system in which women were the private property of men, where local laws only allowed married men access to land and water – with more wives meaning more of those resources, where a price was literally put on each bride – at rates so high that many poor men couldn’t afford to get married, leading them to kidnap and rape women out of desperation."


the suppression wrought by the 'revolutionary' government against progressive and revolutionary organizations immediately after their 'Saur revolution'

This is really the only thing it doesn't talk about (which makes me wonder if you read the post at all or just purposely ignored large parts of it), but anyway...

Since you're putting this assertion forward, how about you provide some sources to back it up. It's very easy to sit back and discount dozens of sources by saying: "they don't mention x" without sourcing your claim.

[ComradeRed]

Condensed versions from dubious sources:

Afghanistan has suffered numerous invasions

Following a military coup in April 1978, Nur Mohammed Taraki was installed as president of a Moscow-oriented regime. Mr Taraki was himself deposed in September 1979 by his prime minister, Hafizullah Amin. In December, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan, Mr Amin was deposed and executed and Babrak Karmal was installed as president. Meanwhile, backed by Pakistan and the US, conservative rural tribesmen, known as the mujahideen, rebelled, sparking a war in 1982. Despite ruthless repression, the Soviet Union could not defeat the mujahideen, but disunity among the various groups prevented the successful formation of an alternative government-in-waiting. Following UN-mediated negotiations, Soviet troops pulled out by February 1989.

The communist regime, led by Mohammed Najibullah, who had ousted Mr Karmal in 1986, remained in power, backed by Soviet arms until 1992. However, a failed coup in the Soviet Union led to the removal of the regime’s hardline supporters and, following a deal between a commander who Mr Najibullah had attempted to oust and powerful Uzbek and Ismaili militias, control of much of north-eastern Afghanistan was lost in 1991. In April 1992, as the mujahideen closed in on Kabul, Mr Najibullah resigned and attempted to leave Kabul. As fighting among the mujahideen groups erupted, the UN’s plan failed and an interim government, headed by Sigbhatullah Mojadedi, the leader of the moderate Jabha-i-Nijat-Milli came to power. From Country Profile 2004: Afghanistan by The Economist's Intelligence Unit.


Ahmad Shah DURRANI unified the Pashtun tribes and founded Afghanistan in 1747. The country served as a buffer between the British and Russian empires until it won independence from notional British control in 1919. A brief experiment in democracy ended in a 1973 coup and a 1978 Communist counter-coup. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 to support the tottering Afghan Communist regime, touching off a long and destructive war. The USSR withdrew in 1989 under relentless pressure by internationally supported anti-Communist mujahedin rebels. Subsequently, a series of civil wars saw Kabul finally fall in 1996 to the Taliban, a hardline Pakistani-sponsored movement that emerged in 1994 to end the country's civil war and anarchy. From World Factbook's entry on Afghanistan (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html).

[RNK]

"Afghan Marxists have claimed that one of their countrymen, Hafizullah Amin, while on visits to the U.S., had been converted by the CIA and became their agent in the Taraki government. ... "Meanwhile, the CIA's trained and armed mujahedeen came in by the thousands to attack parts of the country

Seems the CIA was busy controlling both sides?


And the link I posted earlier in this thread does describe the class makeup of the counterrevolutionaries (Regan and Islamists refer to them as "the resistance"):

What Regan refers to people as is irrelevent, considering he is not only not involved in class struggle and the analyzation of classes, but was the damned President of the United States. Bush's claims that the 'resistence' in Iraq is nothing more than baby-beheading monsters in human form doesn't make it truth.

And I know who the mujahadeen are, and I never said they didn't exist; I said they weren't the only ones there.


Since you're putting this assertion forward, how about you provide some sources to back it up. It's very easy to sit back and discount dozens of sources by saying: "they don't mention x" without sourcing your claim.

Shola e Jawid itself (in its most recent reiteration as the party organ of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan):
http://www.sholajawid.org/

UNHCR off-handedly mentions various instances of Shola-e-Jawid members being arrested by the pro-Soviet government:
http://www.unhcr.org/home/RSDCOI/3ae6ac8f64.html

Various wiki entries on the PYO and Shola-e-Jawid and its members.

[Sky]

Ontop of that, the nature of the PDPA's rise to power is concerning to say the least. Since when are revolutionary movements ushered in through a military coup and subsequent junta?
Since the Free Officers' Movement in Egypt. In the context of an impoverished, backward society, the military fills the void left by an absence of a mass Marxist-Leninist party.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Seems the CIA was busy controlling both sides?

Maybe you didn't read it well enough.. The argument put forward was that the CIA had someone under their pay infiltrate the government of revolutionary Afghanistan. That would have been a part of their attempts to foster counterrevolution.


What Regan refers to people as is irrelevent, considering he is not only not involved in class struggle and the analyzation of classes, but was the damned President of the United States. Bush's claims that the 'resistence' in Iraq is nothing more than baby-beheading monsters in human form doesn't make it truth.


Again, you seem to misunderstand. It is very relevant that Reagan and you both refer to a group of people as 'the resistance.' If Reagan, 'the damned president of the U.S.' supports their 'struggle', one could reasonably guess that their 'struggle' was pro-imperialist. It's just as relevant as Reagan's support of the CIA/Vatican backed fake Solidarność "union" in Poland , which came as Reagan smashed the PATCO strike in the U.S... or his support of the contras in Nicaragua as "freedom fighters."


And I know who the mujahadeen are, and I never said they didn't exist; I said they weren't the only ones there.

They lead the struggle. They were able to pull some peasants and nomads in through trickery just as the capitalists bring workers into their armies. Still, it was a struggle of the khans, mullahs and clergy.. with imperialist backing of course.


Shola e Jawid itself (in its most recent reiteration as the party organ of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan):

The "Maoists" actively fought against the revolutionary government. Of course they were arrested. Would pro-USSR guerrillas not been arrested in China while Mao was alive?

What happened to members of the Red Army or the women's militias that were captured? They were skinned alive, boiled, sprayed with acid, hung, decapitated, etc.


UNHCR off-handedly mentions various instances of Shola-e-Jawid members being arrested by the pro-Soviet government:
http://www.unhcr.org/home/RSDCOI/3ae6ac8f64.html (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.unhcr.org/home/RSDCOI/3ae6ac8f64.html)

Sorry comrade, your one (UN!) source is bogus. "When the Soviets took over Afghanistan in 1978, some Shola-e Jawid members were imprisoned; it is possible that others were killed." The USSR never "took over" Afghanistan.

And wikipedia isn't a valid source.. especially on a question like this.


Condensed versions from dubious sources:

Dubious to say the least. The CIA and a capitalist rag are hardly the go to sources here.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Since the Free Officers' Movement in Egypt. In the context of an impoverished, backward society, the military fills the void left by an absence of a mass Marxist-Leninist party.

The Saur Revolution wasn't a coup.. Read the threads on the subject, study the Saur Revolution, and studying the differences between coups and revolutions. Lenin did a bit of writing on the last issue, which can be of some use.

[RNK]

Again, you seem to misunderstand. It is very relevant that Reagan and you both refer to a group of people as 'the resistance.' If Reagan, 'the damned president of the U.S.' supports their 'struggle', one could reasonably guess that their 'struggle' was pro-imperialist. It's just as relevant as Reagan's support of the CIA/Vatican backed fake Solidarność "union" in Poland , which came as Reagan smashed the PATCO strike in the U.S... or his support of the contras in Nicaragua as "freedom fighters."

And by using that bankrupt logic, one could assume that the entirety of the Iraqi resistence movement must naturally be democratic, anti-imperialist and progressive, simply because the President of the United States says they aren't. Try harder, CdL.


The "Maoists" actively fought against the revolutionary government.

The point was, which you ignored, the PDPA began arresting Maoists and other progressives long before the mujahadeen came around. Infact, it was some of their first actions to suppress revolutionaries -- hardly the behaviour typical of a "revolutionary" government.


Sorry comrade, your one (UN!) source is bogus. "When the Soviets took over Afghanistan in 1978, some Shola-e Jawid members were imprisoned; it is possible that others were killed." The USSR never "took over" Afghanistan.

And wikipedia isn't a valid source.. especially on a question like this.

"Took over", "engineered the government via assassinations and oppurtunistic placement of pro-Moscow politicians in key positions", it's semantics.

Point still stands:

A) Soviet intervention included government assassinations, coups, coverups and the manipulation of Afghan government
B) Immediately after their elitist military coup ("Saur revolution" is and always will be a bogus idealist idea and the rather weak attempts to excuse it because "the next day there was relative calm" is an unmaterialist position to take) the PDPA began oppressing other revolutionary and progressive movements which did not even harbour hostility towards them. Shola Jawid and the PYO only turned hostile towards the PDPA after the detainments and killings.
C) Your attempts to defend your position by essentially running in circles, regurgitating the same sources of information and same tired lines still hasn't explained any of the above; plugging your ears and shouting "it was a revolution! it was a revolution! it was a revolution!" is an ill-conceived strategy.


The Saur Revolution wasn't a coup.. Read the threads on the subject, study the Saur Revolution, and studying the differences between coups and revolutions. Lenin did a bit of writing on the last issue, which can be of some use.

It was precisely a coup and it's sad that you'd try and pervert Lenin's writings, 60 years prior to the event, to try and weasel your way into claiming it was some glorious people's revolution run by a military junta with some slapstick reasoning that it couldn't have been a coup because it didn't fizzle out and wasn't immediately crushed by the people (of course, I suppose equating popular uprising to popular apathy is necessary to make the ends of your ideological work meet so I suppose it's to be expected).

Again, I've seen your "threads" on the subject, I've studied the Saur Revolution and the differences between coups and revolutions and your excuses are just as baseless as they were before.

Question for you:

Where were the uprising masses? Where was the involvement of worker's councils and unions in this "revolution" and the subsequent interim government? Where were the masses of workers and peasants revolting against the bourgeois state?

Infact, who exactly took any active part in this "revolution" other than the President, part of the cabinet, and some parliamentary guards?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Where were the uprising masses? Where was the involvement of worker's councils and unions in this "revolution" and the subsequent interim government? Where were the masses of workers and peasants revolting against the bourgeois state?

Infact, who exactly took any active part in this "revolution" other than the President, part of the cabinet, and some parliamentary guards?

Look, I'm not going to keep responding to you if you're not going to read anything I've linked to. You say you have, then you ask questions like this which have already been answered several times.

"In late 1977, communist students and workers in the capital city of Kabul rose up against the oppressive Daoud government, but were put down by the police. After the rebellion, Daoud had several members of the PDPA jailed.

"In January, 1978, another uprising broke out as thousands of Afghans demanded the release of the jailed PDPA members. The police were unable to put down the rebellion, and the army was called in to smash it instead.

"A few months later, in March, Mir Akbar Khyber (also known as “Kaibar”), a leading member of Parcham, was murdered by government forces. Tens of thousands of Afghans gathered soon after to listen to speeches delivered by leaders of the PDPA. Daoud was frightened by this display of popularity of the PDPA, and ordered its leaders imprisoned.

"By the time the Daoud’s forces had got around to jailing one PDPA leader, and putting another under house arrest, the Saur Revolution had already broken out.

PDPA members in the military, with the support of tens of thousands of others, began an uprising against the Daoud government on April 27, 1978.

"The uprising started at the Kabul International Airport and spread to the capital of Kabal within twenty-four hours. It was there, on April 28, that revolutionary forces stormed the presidential palace and overthrew Mohammed Daoud Khan.

"Upon taking power, the revolutionaries took to the radio to declare, 'For the first time, power has come to the people. The last remnants of the imperialist tyranny, despotism and the royal dynasty have been ended.'

"Two days later, hundreds of thousands of Afghans marched through the streets waving red flags and celebrating the victory of the Saur Revolution." - http://freepeoplesmovement.org/ry/rys7a.html

"On April 27, 1978, to prevent the police from attacking a huge demonstration in front of the presidential palace, the army intervened, and after firing a single shot from a tank at the palace, the government resigned. The military officers then invited the Marxist party to form the government, under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a university professor.

"This is how a Marxist government came into office -- it was a totally indigenous happening -- not even the CIA blamed the U.S.S.R. for this." - http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/104.html

"After Daoud's coup the mass movements had slowed down for a while. As the real character of the coup d'état government became clearer, a tendency towards a far more powerful explosion was born. But this time too there were attempts to halt it by means of bans and the like. For example, when the workers at the Prefabricated House Factory went on strike, this was banned as an activity against the existing order. In the same period, many peasant, student and teachers' movements were suppressed …
"The increasing demand for action among the masses was reaching such dimensions that it could not be stopped by bans. In the army too, the mood was changing even among those sections which supported Daoud's coup.

"At this time, the party member and trade union leader, Ahbar Hayber, was murdered. His funeral turned into a huge mass demonstration. Thousands of people poured into the streets. The demonstration was marked by speeches by leading members of the PDPA. Due to these speeches, the decision was taken to arrest six PDPA leaders, including Tarakki, Amin and Karmal. The government lived in fear. Tarakki was arrested on April 25 1978. Immediately afterwards, Amin was arrested. There existed a strong party organisation within the army under the direction of Amin. Before being taken to prison, Amin issued an order to this party organisation. The next morning, on April 27, the insurrection began. After 10 hours of fighting, the revolution ended in victory." -
Emine Engin's The revolution in Afghanistan

Oh, and the PDPA was heavily involved in the unions that existed in Afghanistan.

Kaibar (whose death sparked the protest that was put down) was a union leader, and many of those that came to protest his death were union members.


And by using that bankrupt logic, one could assume that the entirety of the Iraqi resistence movement must naturally be democratic, anti-imperialist and progressive, simply because the President of the United States says they aren't. Try harder, CdL.

Maybe instead you should try harder to comprehend what it is other comrades are saying.

No one said you can take the words of an imperialist leader and flip them to their exact opposite to find the truth.

But it is safe to assume that anyone that gets the support of the imperialists is acting in their interests.

When the anti-communist U.S. president and bourgeois papers are applauding a group as a bunch of "freedom fighters," we should be vary wary of lending that group our support.

I mean there was a whole propaganda campaign coming out of the U.S., with the movie Rambo 3 and all. And many "leftists" were still supporting these people!

Anyway, Bush isn't against the "resistance" in Iraq because its not "democratic" or "progressive." He supports anti-democratic forces all over the world. But he is against the "resistance," because they aren't acting in the interests of U.S. imperialism.

Why do you think Reagan praised the counterrevolutionaries in Afghanistan?


It was precisely a coup and it's sad that you'd try and pervert Lenin's writings, 60 years prior to the event, to try and weasel your way into claiming it was some glorious people's revolution run by a military junta with some slapstick reasoning that it couldn't have been a coup because it didn't fizzle out and wasn't immediately crushed by the people (of course, I suppose equating popular uprising to popular apathy is necessary to make the ends of your ideological work meet so I suppose it's to be expected).

I see that you haven't read what Lenin had to say on the subject.

"The term ‘putsch’, in its scientific sense, may be employed only when the attempt at insurrection has revealed nothing but a circle of conspirators or stupid maniacs, and has aroused no sympathy among the masses."

and..

"The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army."

Engin posed a great question in his book: "In Russia as well, soldiers made up an important section of the striking force. Clashes were brief and power was seized with relatively few losses. What did last for a long time were the sharp and bloody clashes throughout the civil war. And in the civil war certain backward sections of the people took the side of counterrevolution. Was the October Revolution a ‘coup’?"


"Took over", "engineered the government via assassinations and oppurtunistic placement of pro-Moscow politicians in key positions", it's semantics.

Not really. You're squirming here.

Besides, the USSR didn't "engineer a government."

There were pro-USSR folks at the heads of many states throughout history. Did the USSR "engineer" all of those governments?

Besides, if the government was a USSR puppet state, or whatever you claim, why was it that members of the PDPA that were expelled went to the USSR?


Your attempts to defend your position by essentially running in circles, regurgitating the same sources of information and same tired lines still hasn't explained any of the above;

I wouldn't have to repeat myself if you took the time to read the sources I provided in the first place. It probably also would have helped if you did some research of your own outside of an insignificant Maoist sect's version of things and a report from the United Nations.


plugging your ears and shouting "it was a revolution! it was a revolution! it was a revolution!" is an ill-conceived strategy.

I've spent quite some time studying the Saur Revolution. I've read literally hundreds of articles and essays, and every book available on the subject. I've backed my claims with several sources. That is hardly "plugging my ears."

I have no stake in the Saur Revolution. It didn't come folks belonging to the same tendency as me, or anything of the such. The analysis I've put forward is based on a thorough study of the situation.

You are the one that seems to be putting their politics above reality. You've really provided no evidence that counters anything I've put forward.

Before condemning another comrade for "plugging his ears," you may want to look in the mirror.


The point was, which you ignored, the PDPA began arresting Maoists and other progressives long before the mujahadeen came around. Infact, it was some of their first actions to suppress revolutionaries

Bullshit.

The revolution happened on April 27. Taraki became president on May 1.

The revolutionary government's first moves were to guarantee freedom of religion and women's rights, nationalize agricultural holdings, and wave the peasants' debt.

The mullahs, khans, etc., began fighting the revolutionary government almost immediately. Several uprisings had already occurred by the time Taraki signed the friendship treaty with the USSR in December.

It's not like there was this great peaceful period after the revolution, and the government just went around arresting Maoists for no reason. The revolution stirred up opposition from the landowners, clergy, etc., through its very occurrence.


hardly the behaviour typical of a "revolutionary" government.

Revolutionary governments don't move against political enemies?

None of Mao's political opponents in China arrested when he was alive?


A) Soviet intervention included government assassinations, coups, coverups and the manipulation of Afghan government

This was already addressed.

In fact, the USSR refused to send troops for a while.

Brezhnev said it would play into the hands of the imperialists when Taraki requested assistance after the non-aligned nations summit in Cuba.


B) Immediately after their elitist military coup ("Saur revolution" is and always will be a bogus idealist idea and the rather weak attempts to excuse it because "the next day there was relative calm" is an unmaterialist position to take)

Actually, there were huge parades made up of thousands upon thousands of people waving red flags (sort of like the October Revolution).

Then there was a civil war, which was much more intense than the revolution itself (sort of like the October Revolution).


the PDPA began oppressing other revolutionary and progressive movements which did not even harbour hostility towards them. Shola Jawid and the PYO only turned hostile towards the PDPA after the detainments and killings.

Proof?

[Xiao Banfa]

Although I generally support the PDPA side during the conflict, didn't Taraki lose it a bit at one stage?

Didn't he call himself "Great Teacher Taraki"?

[RNK]

*sigh* I just spent the past hour writing a reply, only to accidently hit the backspace button after clicking outside of the reply window, subsequently losing everything.

I'll try to wrap-up my points.

A) If you're going to make an arguement by copy and pasting literary works written by Geography Professors from Winnipeg (who undoubtedly are experts of the April "Revolution") atleast quote it and don't present it as your own words.
B) I'm assuming most if not all of your sources comes from hartford-hwp; I see you've generously ignored the scathing report from the Soviet Union in late 1979 calling the situation in Afghanistan a "crisis" and citing the internal assassinations and power struggles which tore through the heart of the PDPA throughout its entire existence in office.
C) I find it offensive you would liken the Saur "Revolution" with the October Revolution; I can only imagine you must be trying very hard to blur the lines of objective reality to be able to come to the conclusion that these two completely seperate and insurmountably different events are in any way similar.
D) The coup was not a mass movement and that is the basic point; it was not an instance of huge sections of the workers and peasants revolting against the bourgeois/fuedal state and declaring its intentions to throw off its shackles. On the contrary, the actors in the coup were military generals and small sections of the officer corpse and internal security forces; mass "support" came after the fact (immediately followed by mass resistence). Perhaps this is merely due to a blurring of the definition of revolution; for the purposes of clarification I will redraw my opposition to the Saur "Revolution" on the grounds that it was not a mass revolution, ie, it did not involve any action on the part of the masses - although you'd like to make us think so by citing instances of a few thousand people gathering for this or that reason in the months and weeks before the coup, in reality, the coup itself was carried out by a small number of military professionals (not a mass uprising of the military but a small group of politically-motivated officers) and the masses did not even know of the "revolution" until the next day.
E) Engin was a fruit. He believed that the Saur Coup installed a Dictatorship of the Proletariat -- that was his precise position on the matter. Do you agree with this? If you do, you're in worse straits than I originally thought.
F) Many of your arguements are examples of grasping at straws and providing irrelevent fact to try and back up an arguement. For instance, "In fact, the USSR refused to send troops for a while." So what? The US refused to send troops into Vietnam for even longer but there's no question of their intentions.
G) In response to persecution of political opponents in China, the fact of the matter is that the PDPA immediately moved against leftists, against revolutionary and progressive and socialist organizations. If these are people the PDPA considers political enemies then I rest my case as that in and of itself shows the true class nature of the coup.
H)
Brezhnev said it would play into the hands of the imperialists when Taraki requested assistance after the non-aligned nations summit in Cuba.

The Soviets also released a report (on the same page you've gotten the rest of your info) about the assassination of Taraki and the growth of anti-Soviet sentiment in the Afghan government -- at the very same time that the first Soviet troops were setting foot on Afghani soil.
I) What is your view on the relationship between the USSR and Daoud's government? Are you aware that the USSR sent quite a lot of military aid to Daoud's government?
J) What is your view on the participation of the PDPA in Daoud's coup?

[Comrade Hector]

Seems the CIA was busy controlling both sides?



What Regan refers to people as is irrelevent, considering he is not only not involved in class struggle and the analyzation of classes, but was the damned President of the United States. Bush's claims that the 'resistence' in Iraq is nothing more than baby-beheading monsters in human form doesn't make it truth.

And I know who the mujahadeen are, and I never said they didn't exist; I said they weren't the only ones there.



Shola e Jawid itself (in its most recent reiteration as the party organ of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan):
http://www.sholajawid.org/

UNHCR off-handedly mentions various instances of Shola-e-Jawid members being arrested by the pro-Soviet government:
http://www.unhcr.org/home/RSDCOI/3ae6ac8f64.html

Various wiki entries on the PYO and Shola-e-Jawid and its members.

I wouldn't put too much faith in the Maoist version of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The Maoists stood along side the CIA's Mujahideen fighting Soviet "social-imperialism". In the end they gained nothing but the gratitude the of the Mujahideen's knives and bullets. An example of this was Faiz Ahmad, a leader of the Maoist Afghanistan Liberation Organization who thought he could woo the mullahs into a joint anti-Soviet struggle. His wife Meena Keshwar Kamal, an Afghan feminist heroine was received as an honored guest of the French imperialist president Mitterand to get imperialist support for the "Afghan resistance". Faiz was killed by Hekmatyar's men in 1986, and a few months later Meena was killed also by Hekmatyar.

[RNK]

Yes, we are well aware of the dangerous line walked by many Maoists during those days. Many adopted skewed views of the situation and ended up merging with islamist forces while others placated them and became submissive, only to be destroyed.

But we still stand by the claim that the Saur Coup was not progressive and not revolutionary and amounted to little more than power struggles between elitist members of the military, backed by the Soviet Union.

[Comrade Hector]

Yes, we are well aware of the dangerous line walked by many Maoists during those days. Many adopted skewed views of the situation and ended up merging with islamist forces while others placated them and became submissive, only to be destroyed.

But we still stand by the claim that the Saur Coup was not progressive and not revolutionary and amounted to little more than power struggles between elitist members of the military, backed by the Soviet Union.

Actually the PDPA regime set about transforming a feudalistic society into a modernized industrialized state. The started literacy programs for Afghans; especially women, whom were encouraged to stop covering themselves, get educations, and were given any job men were. Authority of the mullahs, khans, and landowners were stripped, and land was taken from landlords and given to those who worked in them. I can't see what wasn't progressive. True the PDPA was divided and naive; but their program was nothing less than revolutionary.

Truthfully, I see many similarities with Afghanistan to Tibet. In both cases progressive revolutionary forces sought to rid their countries from a feudal theocracy. In both cases the feudalists were stripped from power, and the revolutionaries were aided by military intervention: Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan; Chinese PLA in Tibet. When the Afghan mullahs and the Tibetan monks revolted, they were supplied by every imperialist force, particularly the USA. My point is that Maosits should've supported the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, as they did the Chinese when they brought their revolutionary gains to Tibet. It was progress and anti-imperialist.

[Red_Mackem]

The US destablised the Afghan state, forcing the USSR to aid and military intervene in Afghanistan. Of course the West presented the conflict as "imperialism" on behalf of the Soviet Union. Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted later that he planned it as a trap for the Soviet Union, as their "Vietnam."

The US armed and trained reactionary insurgents to fight the Soviet Union, but later reaped their later losses at the hands of these groups.

Yes the Afghan Gov't was Marxist and the Americans saw a chance to destablise the Country by the Mujahadin (Religous Fanatics). The US then bankrolled the Mujahadin and evenutally forced the USSR out.

One of the Groups that the US backed was lead by Osama bin Ladin who then turnes on the US.

The US Gov't had help arm a Group that now is at war with them.