By Tony Iltis
On September 27, the Afghan capital, Kabul, fell to the Taliban militia, an Islamic fundamentalist group whose penchant for ultra-violence stands out even against the appalling record of the various Mujahadin warlord armies that have been fighting for supremacy in Afghanistan since 1992. Taliban control of Kabul is now threatened by an alliance of almost all the rival Mujahadin groups.
At one level, the Taliban victories represent the burial of a 20-year revolutionary project to modernise this desperately impoverished and underdeveloped country. The Taliban's agenda includes medieval political institutions, public hangings, mutilations and floggings, the abolition of popular music and television, forcing people at gunpoint to attend mosques, compulsory beards for men and essentially prohibiting women from existing in the public sphere.
The laws against women surpass anything in the world: all participation in eduction or work outside the home is outlawed, as is appearing in public unaccompanied by a male relative or not dressed in the burqa (which covers the entire face and body). No allowance is made for women who are economic providers for their family, and even obeying these laws does not remove the threat of arbitrary arrest, flogging and sexual assault.
This agenda is an intensification of trends that have become increasingly dominant since the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989 and particularly since the Mujahadin warlords took over in 1992.
It is generally recognised that military defeat in Afghanistan was a major contributor to the Soviet Union's collapse. What is less well known is that this defeat was aided by the biggest CIA covert operation ever. Furthermore, the disappearance of the Soviet Union has not ended US imperialism's destructive interest in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's history as a buffer on the edge of the British Empire condemned it to extreme poverty and backwardness. Pre-capitalist relations predominated until the 1970s, with power being held by patriarchal tribal chiefs and theocratic landlords. In April 1978, a revolt in the armed forces led to power being taken by the Soviet-aligned People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan.
The PDPA was committed to modernising Afghanistan. Its program included a radical land reform, the massive expansion of education and the abolition of the chattel status of women. However, the PDPA's authoritarian methods, and its endemic factionalism (which led to continual coup attempts, assassinations and increasingly violent purges) fed a traditionalist reaction in the countryside, led by the theocratic elite.
US imperialism immediately saw the benefits in giving massive material support to this reactionary opposition to a Soviet-aligned regime, especially since the unfolding revolution in Iran was a blow to US interests in the region. Thus the Mujahadin were born.
In December 1979, having failed to curb the PDPA's fratricidal tendencies and doubtful of its ability to defeat the Mujahadin, the Soviet Union launched its direct military intervention in Afghanistan. While the Soviet intervention may have prevented the immediate disintegration of the PDPA regime, it also gave the Mujahadin nationalist appeal. That the Soviet forces appeared to learn some of their tactics from the US war against Vietnam did not help. However, it was the increasing overt and covert assistance from the US and its client, Pakistan, that ensured the Mujahadin's success. The scale of the US operation was prompted by Afghanistan's geographical position on the Soviet border.
Drug trade
Drugs played a major role in the US plans. Trading arms for drugs is a standard US tactic for financing covert operations. Just as covert CIA operations in the Indochina wars created the "Golden Triangle" heroin trade and in Latin America created the cocaine cartels, the CIA's covert war in Afghanistan turned that nation into the world's second biggest opiate exporter. For this reason the full extent of US material aid to the Mujahadin groups will never be known.
Soviet troops were withdrawn, defeated, from Afghanistan in 1989, two years before the Soviet Union itself disappeared. The PDPA regime actually outlasted the Soviet Union before falling in 1992.
While the Mujahadin succeeded in hastening the worldwide collapse of Stalinism, they proved incapable of creating a government in Afghanistan. Continual civil war followed between shifting alliances of various warlords, with political struggles overlapping with tribal feuds, regional and linguistic rivalries, religious conflicts and battles over the drug trade.
Most of the major warlords, such as Burhanuddin Rabbani, Ahmad Shah Masood and Gulbuddin Hikmatyer, were leaders of the 10 or so Mujahadin groups. Abdul Rashid Dostom, however, who still controls much of the north, was a general in the PDPA's armed forces until 1992, when his defection to Rabbani's faction ensured the downfall of Najibullah, the last president of the PDPA regime. Dostom later again changed his allegiance — to Rabbani's rival, Hikmatyer.
The Mujahadin victory increased the misery of the Afghan people. For one thing, it brought the war to areas that had previously escaped. Kabul, previously unscathed, was pulverised. Furthermore, any semblance of rule of law ended; all the rival armed groups indulged in looting, torture, rape and sex slavery. It also brought the modernised society of the towns under the rule of the rural traditionalists. Interestingly, plans for gender segregation in the work force were not implemented because of the large number of war widows who were providers for their families and the dependence of the health and education systems on female labour.
The Taliban emerged in 1994. Taliban means "theology students", and the movement is based in students educated at Islamic schools in refugee camps in Pakistan. So extreme is the Taliban's medievalism, violence and oppression of women that the Islamic government of Iran, not renowned for its libertarianism in such matters, has sharply condemned its excesses.
Russia is extremely concerned about the danger of Afghanistan's Islamicist chaos destabilising the former Soviet republics of central Asia, and is actively supporting Dostom as a buffer against the Taliban.
Pakistani troops
Despite propaganda using Islamic fundamentalism as its main post-Cold War bogey, the US has emerged as a major international backer of the Taliban. In the October 20 UK Guardian, Jonathan Steele provides evidence that troops from the major US ally in the region Pakistan, have been fighting alongside the Taliban and that the CIA, which has close links with Pakistani military intelligence (ISI), is involved. It appears that the US believes that the Taliban, unlike the Mujahadin warlords, is capable of uniting Afghanistan under a single government.
Furthermore, the movement's hostility to Iran and links with Pakistan would make such a government amenable to US interests. Long-term US aims in the region include building oil and gas pipelines from central Asia, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.
However, the ability of the Taliban to unite Afghanistan will be limited by popular rejection of their brutality. The villagers of Charikar, 25 kilometres north of Kabul, initially welcomed the Taliban, feeling they could not be worse than the Rabbani-Masood forces. After enduring their violence, however, the villagers drove them out with bare fists and stones.
Furthermore, there has been political action by women protesting against their increasing oppression, including a press release sent out from Taliban-occupied Kabul on October 22 and a demonstration in the Dostom-held town of Mazar-I-Sharif.