SOCIALIST UNITY

Given that today is the sixth anniversary of the American led invasion of Afghanistan, it is worth reflecting on how that poor benighted country ended up in the state it is today.

This is particularly important given that the pro-war “left” claim that the war in Afghanistan is justified to prevent the victory of Islamist fanatics. But few of these same western liberals supported the intervention of the Russians fighting against Islamist extremists. (pictured - the Red Army in Afghanistan)

Some on the British left also claim that it is a matter of principle to promote secularism, but it was the fumbling incompetence of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government in rushing ahead with secularisation that undemined them.

So first let us have some context. In 1979 Afghanistan was a relatively stable country. Poor but much wealthier than today. The main crop in Afghanistan was not Opium instead 26% of land was growing wheat producing 3 million tonnes per annum. Afghanistan exported 30000 tonnes of cotton fibre, and 57000 tonnes of raisins per year (the 4th biggest world producer of raisins). The country had an intact and extensive irrigation system to support this agricultural diversity. There was an extensive road system that allowed agricultural produce to be taken to market. The main export of Afghanistan in 1979 was natural gas not narcotics. And there were 120000 tourist visitors per year.

In 1979 Afghanistan had a functioning railway network, financed by Iran and with French technical expertise. Women had full legal equality, where a quarter of the government’s budget was spent on education, and secular schools were opening in every village, for girls and boys. Kabul had a university, and there were schools of medicine, science, pharmacy and engineering.

In 1973 there had been a coup by liberal anti-communist Mohammed Daud who overthrew the Monarchy, and instituted a process of modernisation. At that time political Islamism had no support in Afghanistan as can be proven by the utter failure of an Islamist military uprising in 1975.

David N. Gibbs Associate Professor. History and Political Science, University of Arizona, wrote in the Journal Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2, June 2006:

The Afghan Communists, the PDPA, were created in 1965. In an election that year, the PDPA competed for seats in a newly created legislature, the Wolesi Jirga. The party won several seats, though it failed to register as a national presence of major importance. The PDPA was, however, a non-ethnic political force, one of the few in a country where politics had an overwhelmingly regional and ethnic orientation. The party also became an advocate of equal rights for women —several of its top leaders were women — and this too was an innovation in the patriarchal context of Afghanistan. The PDPA’s base of support was mostly “intellectuals,” a category that meant almost anyone with a secondary education. Teachers and petty government officials in cities and larger towns constituted much of its membership. Elements of the military officer corps, a large segment of whom were Soviet trained, also supported the PDPA.

The PDPA suffered from serious weaknesses. First, the party had little influence among the peasant class, which constituted the large majority of Afghanistan’s population. Though the PDPA often criticized the unequal land system and advocated land reform, the peasants regarded PDPA members with suspicion and hostility. The “godless” character of Marxist ideology had little appeal among the deeply religious population, while the party’s advocacy of female equality was also widely unpopular in the rural areas. Chronic factionalism was another problem. The PDPA was divided into two organized factions: the Parcham (”Banner”) faction, led by Babrak Karmal, and the Khalq (”masses”) faction, led by Mohammed Nur Taraki and Hafizullah Amin. In 1973 the U.S. Embassy estimated that membership in the Parcham faction did not exceed “a few hundred, of which probably less than fifty constitute the hard core leadership,” while the Khalq faction had “several hundred members.”

So the PDPA had only a few hundred members, and was riven by violent factionalism, no support in the countryside and had no plan for taking power.

The Daud government had a consistently pro-American tilt consistent with his anticommunist policy, Daud sought to crush the PDPA, and he appointed an openly anticommunist interior minister, Abdul Nuristani. During 1977–78, a series of repressive measures, directed by Nuristani, resulted in the arrest of the top communist leadership. These arrests triggered a response from pro-PDPA officers in the military, led by a politically savvy Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Abdul Qader. The Air Force-led coup that followed involved several days of street fighting in Kabul among factions of the military and security forces. In the end, Daud was killed, and the PDPA assumed power as the new government of Afghanistan in April 1978.

The specific event that precipitated the coup in 1978 was the assassination by person or persons unknown of PDPA leader Khayber, and following the coup the army returned power to civilan rule only 4 days after they took power. The PDPA now in power were completely unprepared for it. Their action was not an attempted “revolution from above”, but a defensive measure to prevent the party being liquidated. There was no Russian involvement in the coup.

Former KGB officer Alexander Morozov stated, in an interview conducted after the end of the cold war, that the Soviets did not even become aware of the Afghan coup plans until shortly before the coup had begun. After discovering the plans, Soviet officials in Kabul received “confused messages…from the Foreign Ministry and KGB headquarters” about how they were supposed to respond. Selig Harrison, who interviewed many of the principal figures, concluded: “The overall impression left by the available evidence is one of an improvised, ad hoc Soviet response to an unexpected situation.”

The PDPA therefore found themselves in a similar position to the New Jewel Movement in Grenada, who I have written about before. Unprepared for power, and with insufficient support to really rule, but forced to form a government to pre-empt moves to liquidate them. The immediate reforms that they sought to institute therefore had insufficient preparation.

The PDPA reforms included a large-scale land distribution program, which aimed to break up large holdings. The government announced that it would seize land holdings if they exceeded a fixed size limit (with a maximum limit of sixty hectares per holding); the seized lands were to be distributed to poor peasants. The traditional “bride price,” according to which Afghan girls were effectively sold into marriage by their families, was officially abolished. A literacy program, aimed especially at young girls, was launched; university students and other PDPA cadre were dispatched to the countryside to implement the program.  In practice, the PDPA program was marred by insensitivity heavy-handedness, and reckless rapidity, as Fred Halliday explained:

The reforms were administered in such a way as often to alienate the rural population they were designed to win over.…The land reform was not based on any … survey of the Afghan countryside, or even on a minimal preliminary investigation of land ownership.…Far too often, a group of PDPA members and army personnel would arrive in a village and start commanding the peasants without proper awareness of local sensibilities and conditions.…Added to this were problems of rural honour and tribal loyalty against which the determined urban-based [PDPA] cadres soon collided.

As a result of the cack-handed way the PDPA linked the land reforms with measures undermining traditional Afghan and Islamic customs, the landlords presented themselves as the defenders of Islam, and an armed rural rebellion grew. For example Gulbaddin Hekmatyar came forward seeking a purified Islamic state, far stricter than anything ever before seen in Afghanistan.

This is an important point to note, because it was the campaign for secularism by the PDPA that undermined their progressive polices. Yet time and again there are socialists in Britain now who tell us that campaigning for secularism is a socialist principle.

On 3 July 1979, US President Jimmy Carter signed a directive authorizing the Central Intelligence Agency to “provide…support to the Afghan insurgents, either in the form of cash or non-military supplies.” The CIA then began secretly aiding the mujahiddin guerrillas, several months before the Soviet invasion. The program focused on a border area of long-standing interest to the Soviets, with an aim to bringing the Russians into the war. In a 1998 interview, US national security adviser Brzezinski acknowledged this aid program, arguing that it was undertaken with the understanding that it “was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.” Brzezinski declared that he welcomed the opportunity to lure the Soviets “into the Afghan trap” and to give “the USSR its Vietnam War.”

So the war, and a war led by Islamist fanatics, was now stoked up by the Americans. Later they would recruit Osama Bin Laden and other Arab Wah’habis to wage a Jihad in Afghanistan to drive the country back into the middle ages.

It is worth saying that the PDPA government, already with a very small social base and limited legitimacy, was at this time turning upon itself and the dominant faction under Taraki and Amin were arresting and torturing their own opponents within the party. But they were operating in a desperate situation that they had not planned for, and were struggling against an insurgency outside their ability to control. It seems in all honesty that they were a bit crazy in desperation.

Several requests were made by the Afghan government for Russian assistance. It is interesting that the Russians were reluctant to act. Indeed the Russian government advised very strongly that the PDPA government should reform itself, rather than seek aid. On 20 March 1979, Brezhnev instructed Taraki as follows:

“It is very important to widen the base which supports the leadership of the party [the PDPA] and the country. First of all, of great importance here is the unity of the party, mutual trust, and ideo[logical] political solidarity throughout its ranks from top to bottom.” Brezhnev also urged Taraki to broaden the government’s overall political base, which had become quite narrow during this period: “It is worth thinking about creating a single national front under the aegis of the [PDPA].…Such a front could include already existing socio-political organizations and be supported by groups of worker, peasants, petty and middle bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia and students, youth, and progressive women.” The documentary record also reflects a growing Soviet concern about the excessive repression used by the PDPA. A report to the Central Committee from late June 1979 observes that “collegial leadership [in the PDPA] is lacking, all power in fact is concentrated in the hands of N.M. Taraki and H Amin, who none too rarely make mistakes and commit violations of legality.”

What is more the USSR was very reluctant to commit troops. When the question was discussed by the Politburo in April 1979 the consensus was against military intervention. KGB chief Yuri Andropov who set the tone:

“We must consider very, very seriously the question of whose cause we will be supporting if we deploy our forces into Afghanistan. It’s completely clear to us that Afghanistan is not ready at this time to resolve all of the issues it faces through socialism. The economy is backward, the Islamic religion predominates, and nearly all of the rural population is illiterate. We know Lenin’s teaching about a revolutionary situation. Whatever situation we are talking about in Afghanistan, it is not that type of situation. Therefore, I believe that we can suppress a [mujahiddin] revolution in Afghanistan only with the aid of our bayonets, and that is for us entirely inadmissible. We can not take such a risk.…[Speaking again later in the day] the people do not support the government of Taraki. Would our troops really help them here? In such a situation, tanks and armoured cars cannot save anything.”

In September 1979, the situation deteriorated. The most extreme elements of the PDPA, associated with Amin, staged a coup and seized full power. Taraki was arrested and later executed. After the coup, the tone in Soviet documents became more anxious. One post-coup report noted despairingly that “all the levers of real power by now are essentially in Amin’s hands,” and added: “Amin has ignored the repeated appeals of our comrades warning him that such a step [the effort to depose Taraki] might have dire consequences both for the party and for the country.

This is when it gets interesting.

The fact of American involvement in Afghanistan backing the Islamists is not in dispute. American warmonger, Brzezinski, admitted as much. And the Soviet media complained repeatedly about western meddling in Afghanistan. At the time of the Soviet invasion, in December 1979, for example, Pravda stated that the USSR was acting against “American-financed `counter-revolutionary’ groups. Similarly, Izvestia claimed that the CIA “is directly involved in training Afghan rebels in camps in Pakistan and maintaining contacts with counter-revolutionaries and reactionaries in Afghanistan itself.”

But more than that, the Russian Communist party became convinced that the USA were offering aid directly to Amin, aid they themselves had refused, in order to turn Afghanistan into a border state hostile to the USSR. Whether or not this was true, we have no access to the American records to check, but the Russian records are now public.

A 29 October report to the Central Committee of the CPSU observed:

“Recently there have been noted signs…that the new leadership of Afghanistan [i.e., Amin] intends to conduct a more “balanced policy” in relation to the Western powers. It is known in particular that representatives of the USA, on the basis of their contacts with the Afghans are coming to a conclusion about the possibility of a change in the political line of Afghanistan in a direction which is pleasing to Washington.”

A memorandum from early December 1979 by KGB chief Andropov raised a similar concern:

Alarming information started to arrive about Amin’s secret activities, forewarning of a possible political shift to the west. [These reports include the following:] Contact with an American agent about issues which are kept secret from us. Promises to tribal leaders to shift away from [the] USSR and to adopt a “policy of neutrality.”

In December 1979, the Russians sent troops into Afghanistan.

Despite all its flaws the PDPA government was still progressive, promoting the modernisation of Afghanistan, womens’ rights, promotion of education and health, and combating Islamist extremism. The Russians sought to maintain these progressive policies, but were unable to do so as the USA and Pakistan fed the extremist Islamist insurgency.

It is also interesting that the anti-imperialism of fools that leads some in the Western left to support the Taliban today is not new. The SWP’s Afghanistan expert Jonathan Neale has always advocated backing the reactionary Islamists, with their agenda of extreme misogyny and landlordism, against socialists in Afghanistan: As Neale writes: “I was opposed to the revolution from above in 1978, and I still am. … In an article written for this journal [the ISJ] in 1981, I said that we had no choice but to support the resistance against the Russian invasion.”  Neale’s position is interesting, because had there not been a coup in 1978, the PDPA would have been wiped out, and in those circumstances surely socialists in the West have to back the judgement of socialists on the ground faced with that threat? Also, what Neale describes as a “revolution from above” was actually an urban led series of reforms against landlordism and oppression of women, why should western socialists oppose that? Neale opposes the reformist government because the changes were “top down”, how could it be otherwise? The population were 1.5 million, of which only 30000 to 50000 industrial workers. The rural population were poor and dispersed, with a per capita income of $116, and only one telephone per 10000 inhabitants, and one car per 500 inhabitants. To say there should be no reform from above in such circumstances is to say there should be no change for the better at all.

It is worth noting however that when the Russians finally withdrew in 1989, Kabul and most of the country’s infrastructure was still intact. The Taliban did not take power until seven years after the Russian withdrawal. But by 1996, half of Kabul had already been destroyed by the US backed mujahideen Tens of thousands were killed in fighting over the city, by different factions of these American sponsored war lords.

So today, Afghanistan is in ruins. There is no hope of progress through Western military victory, nor really is such a victory even possible. Yet neither is there any hope of progress form any political or military force in Afghanistan. The people of that country have been pawns for American interests, and there seems no solution to their plight.