The US’s Savage War of Vengeance against the Peoples of Afghanistan

Afghanistan and its peoples are the first victims in the new round of US imperialist aggression unleashed in October 2001 on the heels of the 11 September events. It has been a test case for the US’s new self-proclaimed right to intervene, launch military assaults, overthrow governments and install puppet regimes wherever the needs of its empire dictate — in this case, turning Afghanistan into a military outpost in an unstable but strategically important Central Asia, which links the Middle East and South Asia. Yet while the US imperialists celebrate what they call a victory, this new crime against the oppressed people of the world has enraged and awakened many to the realities of a US-dominated world and its fast-changing “rules”, calling forth new waves of resistance.

The presence of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan has been used as the justification by the US for a brutal and barbaric assault. But bin Laden is a figure created by the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, who was recruited to mobilise and train Moslems from all over the world to fight in Afghanistan. Bin Laden’s motivation was to defend Islamic rule through a crusade against “the godless communists”, as the US State Department put it. According to the leading French daily Le Monde, his personal fortune originated not from his wealthy Saudi family connections so much as from the CIA payroll itself and his alleged “pocketing” of one of his many deliveries of US money to Islamic anti-Soviet forces. It was only when the Saudi regime agreed to allow US troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia, land of Mecca, the “house of god”, that Bin Laden began to oppose the Saudi rulers and turned against the US he had been serving.

Whether or not Osama bin Laden was responsible for the bombing of the US Embassy in two African countries in August 1998, these incidents coincided with the US’s declining hopes that the Taliban could actually sponsor security in Afghanistan. This provided the US with a lever to use against the Taliban, illustrated by the pressure Bush applied on them after he took office to expel bin Laden from the country.

The 11 September 2001 events did not fundamentally change US imperialism’s plans. Rather, they set into motion the application of a new strategy in the region, the first phase of which was launching a savage war against the peoples of Afghanistan.

The most advanced military technology has been used against one of the weakest and poorest nations in the world to demolish the already devastated cities, streets and houses, and bring greater misery, injury, death and mourning, along with massive displacement, to a people who had already suffered such imperialist interventions for many decades.

The US deployed new weapons systems it was itching to test in the field¹ as part of its cowardly method of fighting, just as its Zionist puppets use tanks against Palestinian stone throwers in the Middle East. This revealed once again its absolute contempt for, and non-compliance with, international rules of engagement and the treatment of prisoners of war, and its utter hatred of the masses of people in the region. The civilian population was consistently a target of its indiscriminate bombing, and it was clear from the early days that creating widespread fear was an integral part of the wider war offensive the US was declaring against “unfriendly” regions of the world.

Whether the victims were children or the elderly, “friendly forces”, hospitals or prisons, the US arrogantly made up the rules as it went along and rained down huge numbers of bombs on non-military targets, despite the high precision-instrumented guidance systems. Fazal Rabi, 30, who had lost 12 family members in the bombardment on 21 October of Tarin Kot that killed at least 21 people, told the Washington Post in February 2002, “The Americans say they can see anything on the ground. But these were children. We are not Mullah Mohamed Omar or Osama bin Laden, we are poor farmers.”

The Pentagon maintained a steady stream of cover-ups and made intense efforts to block media access to the area and to prevent any on-the-ground reports on the war. Even so, the scale of the attacks on the people is such that it cannot be completely covered up or denied. Repeated examples of stories have pushed their way to the surface.

In Karam in Nangahar Province, according to survivors, US bombs killed between 50 and 100 of their families and neighbours, demolishing one village. In the village of Chowkar-Karez, which had no military presence whatsoever, one man lost 19 of his relatives in a US raid. According to a German relief organisation, in an attack on 1 November in Ishaq Suleiman 12 people were killed and 14 others wounded. On 8, 9 and 10 November the bombardment of Khakriz, a village north of Kandahar, killed 70 people. A US bombing raid on 29 December on the village Qalaye Niazi outside Gardez killed at least 52 civilians, including 25 children, according to the UN, though some local survivors reported a higher figure of 100 villagers. Many of those killed were families who had gathered for a wedding.

It became even more difficult for the US to hide the killing of civilians when on 20 December they attacked a convoy of cars carrying local tribal elders to participate in the inauguration of the new government. In another attack on 24 January they killed more than 20 and captured 27, who were handcuffed and tortured. Some were reportedly executed by the US forces.

As for the US respect for medical installations during wartime, its forces bombed the Red Cross warehouse in Kabul in October, issued a denial of the attack, then recanted their denial in the face of the obvious facts, apologised for it as a “mistake”, and finally showed what this meant by bombing it a second time, all within ten days. On 28 January, US Special Forces and allied troops attacked Kandahar Hospital, killing non-Afghan fighters.

Although figures undoubtedly are low, including because of the US block of media access, it is estimated that in the first six months more than 18,000 bombs, missiles and other ordnance were pounded on the country. Totals of civilian casualties range from 3,000 to 8,000 (the high end from a de-mining expert) during the first several months of the war. Through February 2002, it is estimated that over 10,000 outmatched and surrounded fighters were killed by US carpet-bombing.

Even the US’s treatment of prisoners of war – many dozens of whom were openly executed whilst being transported in trucks that were tightly sealed so they would suffocate on route to prisons – illustrates plainly the murderous intentions of the Pentagon leaders and their complete hypocrisy towards international conventions. At the prison in Mazar-e-Sharif, US and British-led troops massacred almost all of the 300-500 prisoners there.

“Resurrecting” the Warlords the Imperialists had Defeated to Bring in the Taliban

Although the US war alliance repeatedly claimed victory over the Taliban, they constantly renewed the bombardment campaigns, then “estimated” they had again killed hundreds more fighters. Victory came more easily in the cities, especially in the north. This mainly reflected the unpopularity and isolation of the Taliban rather than the strength of the Northern Alliance or US advanced technology. In many cases the Northern Alliance met with essentially no resistance.

The US itself had given a green light to the Pakistani training and piloting of the Taliban armed forces in order to further divide and defeat (or incorporate and control) the regional and often tribally-based armies to bring the Taliban to power in the mid-1990s. In September 2001, apart from the relatively more organised Northern Alliance, which included most groups that fought the Soviets but also at least some generals, such as the notorious General Dostum, who were part of the pro-Soviet forces, many of the weakened Walis (chiefs) and their local forces were disorganised, scattered and only willing to fight on a mercenary basis.

Haunted with memories of high US losses in Korea and Vietnam, the US sought to limit casualties amongst its own forces in the ground fighting, despite amassing a large military presence in Afghanistan. For example, when the US wanted to enter and search the long stretches of caves where Taliban and al-Qaeda forces were believed to be hiding, US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld preferred to offer money and other “favours” to let Afghanistani “volunteers” do the dangerous work in order to spare the lives of his marines and special troops. At the same time, the US military needed to train and purchase the help of the experienced Afghanistani fighters, who were organised under the command of local warlords, some of whose support the US would also need in any case for a post-Taliban political solution.

An article in Shola, the organ of the Communist Party of Afghanistan, exposes the weakness of these regional warlord commanders and feudal armies. It maintains that it was only after the heavy two-month long bombardments by the US and their allies had dealt decisive blows to the forces and military fortifications of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, causing the collapse of their front lines, that these tribal and feudal forces got a “new lease on life” and were belatedly mobilised for service in the US-led war.

Their assessment is that the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters put up hardly any resistance in the North and in fact throughout most of the country, with the exception of Kandahar and the Tora Bora mountains, either escaping the barricades or openly capitulating with little fighting.

In the Jalalabad area in the east, which the Taliban and al-Qaeda had evacuated without a fight, the US had to hire a mercenary force from amongst Afghanistani immigrants in Peshawar. They were mobilised with the aid of Pakistani officials in order to strengthen the position of the weak commander there, Hajji Qadir.

In the southern Pastun areas that were the Taliban’s stronghold, Shola states that the local reactionary anti-Taliban warlords were defeated and basically had no forces under their command, as the local wali had been in Pakistan. As is well known, attempts to send in CIA envoys Abdul Haq and Hamed Karzai (with the ill-fated goal of wooing “moderate” Taliban figures to expedite the collapse of national power) ended in Abdul Haq’s arrest and execution by the Taliban, while Karzai barely escaped with the help of American helicopters. As a result, the military forces linked to the United Islamic Front became the main Afghanistani ground force under US leadership. In fact, it was only after the Taliban and al-Qaeda lost the areas in the north, north-east, west, centre and Kabul that Karzai could safely return to his home area in the south under US air cover and with the support of its ground forces, and gather political support of his own. After the surrender of Kandahar was negotiated between the Taliban and Karzai, this wali’s (named Gol Agha) tribal forces, backed up by hired fighters from Quetta across the Pakistani border and American commandos, mounted an attack on Kandahar to occupy important government buildings (particularly the Welayat, the provincial government headquarters) in order to force Karzai and the local council to recognise him as the wali of Kandahar.

The final strongholds of al-Qaeda in the Tora Bora mountains south of Jalalabad faced not only heavy US bombardments, but also some commando attacks by US ground forces. The role of local Afghanistani forces linked to the Eastern Council in Tora Bora had totally been for show during this fighting, but these forces, or at least sections of them, started bargaining in exchange for bribes under the guise of sending a large number of “encircled” forces towards Pakistan. After the collapse of al-Qaeda in Tora Bora, the American forces not only took charge of those who were arrested or capitulated, but as soon as the local Eastern Council forces left the area, the US occupied the natural and military fortifications, turning it into one of its main bases in Afghanistan.

Sholanotes that, as soon as the US invasion was announced, the Russian imperialists, too, immediately set about buying a section of these local fighters to ensure they would have a say in future developments. They provided tens of millions of dollars to forces linked to the United Islamic Front.

History has repeatedly shown that anti-people forces can be defeated by the struggle of the people who are determined to fight a just war. Afghanistan itself has been the graveyard of many reactionary forces and invaders who were equipped with much superior weapons. As a result of the long history of battle with foreign invaders, the people of Afghanistan are famous for being good fighters. In addition, very favourable terrain exists, especially in the east where high mountains render modern hi-tech weapons less efficient. Numerous US helicopter crashes and “equipment” failure casualties provided several examples of this.

The US “Elect” Themselves an Interim Government

The new interim government headed by Hamed Karzai is another product of the imperialists’ war against Afghanistan. The imperialists wanted to rapidly put together a semblance of a central government and strike a relative balance between the two main groups courted by the US and contending for political influence in a post-Taliban settlement. (The first group, Rabanni’s government, which held power before the Taliban seized Kabul, and the second, the circles around the former king, Zahir Shah, who was overthrown by a coup in 1973.) They called a meeting in November 2001 in Bonn, Germany, adding two other groups (the “Cyprus meeting”, mainly supported by Iran, and the Peshawar group, mainly supported by Pakistan). Bonn was in fact a continuation of a previous meeting, chaired by US senators, between the Rome circle (supporters of Zahir Shah) and the United Islamic Front, one of the main organisations within the Northern Alliance, during which the US invasion and the formation of a post-Taliban govenment was tacitly agreed upon. (This analysis is drawn from Shola. For more information, see the excerpt from Shola on AWTW’s web site, as well as the sidebar excerpts in this issue about political and administrative restructuring, including the organisation of the feudal council, the loya jirga.)

Militarily, the US applied pressure on the forces at the meeting to reach an agreement and to elect its own man, Hamed Karzai, as the head of the interim government, by deliberately maintaining Taliban rule in some areas of the south, whilst at the same time carrying out heavy bombing and bringing ground troops to the area. By the same token, as soon as the meeting ended, air attacks and ground operations by US forces around Kandahar intensified, additional forces were mobilized, and in a short time Taliban and al-Qaeda were forced to evacuate Kandahar.

Reconstruction then became the subject of the day. The very same countries that had helped devastate Afghanistan promised some $3 billion in aid and reconstruction.

Political reconstruction for US imperialism means establishing a state that is unconditionally in the service of US policy in the region. A government committed to democracy means being ready to imprison and torture the people and any voice of opposition, to oppress the national minorities and women like the other “democracies” it has sponsored for such ends in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Chile, Turkey, and of course that bloodiest bastion of “democracy”, Israel.

Economic reconstruction means to intensify the exploitation and oppression of workers and peasants and all the toilers, whilst having a free hand to plunder Afghanistan’s natural resources to maximise the profit of the multinationals. Foreign minister Abdullah said in an interview that constructing the oil pipeline through Afghanistan would be one way to help independence. Considering that the interim chairman, Karzai, and the US special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmy Khalilzad, have been consultants to the Unocal oil company, which spent much of the 1990s seeking to build this oil pipeline, clearly demonstrates the new hand-picked government’s orientation. The International Monetary Fund’s assistant director for monetary and exchange affairs suggested that Afghanistan should just abandon its currency and adopt the dollar instead. This would, he explained, be a “temporary” measure, but he admitted, “when an economy dollarises, it takes a little while to undollarise”.

As for military reconstruction, US imperialism and its puppet regime seem to have in mind building an army that can better protect their interests and guard any pipeline built. But in the war-torn semi-feudal semi-colony of Afghanistan, scarred and divided by imperialism’s successive rapes, the new army must become centralised and uniformly (better than the Taliban) able to suppress, imprison and torture any opposition or rebellion and revolutionary organisations/parties that might challenge the fragile ruling coalition in any way.

In sum, the new government will be a tool for imposing terror and repression on the masses. If needed, like Turkey, the rear flank of NATO, it will participate in imperialist wars to kill masses in other countries. The US has begun to train and advise Northern Alliance forces, as well as recruiting new soldiers from the Afghanistani population, and its marines are helping to build more prisons. But more than that, the military reconstruction of Afghanistan has to serve the broader interests of US imperialism in this strategically important region. A commentator in the British daily, The Guardian, wrote on 12 February: “US military ‘tent cities’ have now been established in 13 places in the states bordering Afghanistan. New airports are being built and garrisons expanded. In December, the US assistant secretary of state Elizabeth Jones promised that, ‘when the Afghan conflict is over we will not leave central Asia. We have long-term plans and interests in this region.’” In addition, to ensure that the field is not completely controlled by the US head of the imperialist pack, Britain, Germany, France and Russia have all agreed to assist in the training of the army and to provide aid and equipment. Shola reports that modern arms are flowing from the US and Russia to the regional commanders, each seeking to strengthen different military factions and their overall position of influence within the new Afghanistani army.

The ugly face of a puppet regime that is being restructured to more efficiently ensure imperialist domination of the people, national resources and economy, whilst enshrining backward and oppressive social relations, can be seen from every angle.

No Saviours

There has been much debate generated internationally over whether the new fundamentalists, under “pressure” from their more modern counterparts in Washington, are serious about freeing women from the tyrannies of the Islamic Taliban the US rulers supported yesterday. (See 8 March 2002 CoRIM statement on International Women’s Day in this issue.)

Far from caring about the suppression of women, the US government always supplied generous aid to build up the most fanatic and anti-woman mujahedeen groups like the one led by Golbedin Hekmatyar (infamous for his especially ruthless targeting of the Maoist armed forces) during the years of Soviet occupation, and others which came to power later. Indeed, a pillar of this new regime is none other than the Northern Alliance, a group of Islamic thugs whose record of mass rape against women was so outrageous that it helped pave the way for the Taliban’s rise to power. When the people of Afghanistan were suffering under one of the most barbaric fundamentalist Islamic groups, the Taliban, the people of the world in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Afghanistan broadly opposed the regime’s harsh treatment of the people and of women in particular, whilst the US argued against “isolating” the Taliban regime.

The Islamic veil symbolises the tribal and feudal patriarchy that still underpins the subjugation of Afghan women. Under the US-backed regime, the veil is going to continue in some form. Perhaps the burka textile prison that physically enfolds women and literally stifles their participation in society will add a “window” to the world to become a chador or different garb, as in the Iranian or Saudi model. Some women may be able to show their faces to be able to sell their very cheap labour to the rare new capitalist investor hoping to profit from a stable Afghanistan. Just as in Iran, where the Islamic republic turned the political clock backwards in many ways, suppressing women’s rights, the semi-feudal oppression of women in Afghanistan became doubly cruel after the arrival of the Islamic regimes. (See “Islam: Ideology and Tool of the Exploiting Classes”, in this issue.)

As the Afghanistani women interviewed by the March Eighth Organisation of Iranian and Afghanistani Women declared righteously, the whole society must change, “We all have a Mullah Omar at home…and we have no choice but to struggle against this system.”

Whose Future?

It is true that the centuries-long heroic struggle of the people of Afghanistan has not resulted in any true liberation and independence for the people. They have been fighting for centuries against foreign powers. They have taught important lessons to the invaders. But, in the absence of real revolutionary leadership, the fruits of people’s struggles have been stolen time and again by the feudals, Khans and tribal leaders who ultimately were in the service of imperialism and never hesitated to sell out the nation’s sovereignty. This tragedy is being repeated once more. During a century of colonisation, the British never saw peace in Afghanistan. The Soviet social-imperialists did not have a moment’s peace and were drawn into a deadly war with the masses. The US imperialists will certainly face the same fate, but with what future for the masses?

In November 2001, an important statement appeared calling for all the genuine Maoist forces in Afghanistan to work together to form the single, united Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party the country so painfully lacks. “The Communist Party of Afghanistan and the Unity Committee of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist Movement of Afghanistan, with the aid of the RIM Committee, have reached agreement: in order to achieve ideological-political and organisational unity in a single communist party, we are launching a common struggle for a unified party programme and constitution, as well as increasing co-ordination of united practical struggles in other spheres.”

The Communist Party of Afghanistan, a participating party in RIM, has called for linking up with a powerful broad anti-war movement world-wide. They have already declared their commitment towards a struggle to the end against the invaders. A genuine revolutionary struggle under the leadership of the proletariat and its Marxist-Leninist-Maoist vanguard party is the crucial way to build unity amidst the divided people to drive these bloodthirsty forces out of Afghanistan, uproot semi-feudalism and establish new democracy. A new-democratic state is the only state that can really liberate the country from the rule of feudalism and imperialism. In the final analysis, only this will allow the people to take their destiny in their own hands, including by imposing their dictatorship over the handful of reactionary feudals and bureaucrat bourgeoisie, who are so content to do imperialism’s dirty work and who hold back the people and their struggle by enforcing the most backward, misogynist and oppressive relations. Only then will the shadow of the Mullah Omar dominators disappear from every doorway and the people’s energy and potential be unleashed to transform society in their own interests. That is the sole path to liberation for the people of Afghanistan.

 Endnotes

1 One of the imperialists’ new war toys for mass murder is a 2,000 pound laser-guided thermobaric bomb known as “Big Blue Two”, the BLU-118, dropped for the first time in Afghanistan by US Navy planes. It is designed to kill people in caves and bunkers without collapsing the structures. The blast sucks up oxygen, creating a vacuum that collapses lungs, breaks eardrums, and pulls out eyes. A barbaric weapon matched only by the barbaric character of the imperialists themselves.