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Worker's Liberty LEFT COLUMN: 15.11.2001 What we thinkFor democracy and international solidarity - against both imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism After the fall of KabulAn opposition to US/UK war plans which did not also condemn Islamic fundamentalism and its its atrocities like 11 September was always an "anti-imperialism of idiots". It always meant misusing "anti-imperialism" to side, implicitly, with the dark-ages warriors of Islamism, oppressors of "their own" people in a way whose nearest European analogue is fascism. Now, after the collapse of the Taliban in large parts of Afghanistan, what was politically untenable has become flagrant absurdity. The picture is still unclear; our information is still mostly filtered through US military briefings to the media. However, the Taliban has retreated from most of Afghanistan outside the Pashtun areas of the south-east, and there it faces large revolts. Pakistani socialist Farooq Tariq, a courageous opponent of the US/UK war much closer to the scene than us, writes: "The surrender of Kabul shows the absolute dictatorial nature of the Taliban and its fast disappearing social base. The ordinary citizens of Kabul seemed quite delighted over this victory... The collapse of Kabul vindicates neither the bombing nor those sections of the anti-war movement who saw the Taliban as 'anti-imperialist'. "The Taliban was the most hated regime that the Afghan masses had ever seen... The religious fundamentalist forces were a tiny, very committed minority who were able to hold on with the support of the international religious fundamentalist forces... "There could be a little so-called liberal time in Afghanistan if a broad-based government is established under the influence of US imperialism". To preach distrust of US/UK militarism - that was and is still a basic and irreducible duty for socialists. Anti-imperialism in the name of the positive programme of democracy, socialism and international solidarity - which entails opposition to both the Taliban and a possibly-more-liberal US-sponsored replacement regime - that makes sense. An "anti-imperialism" based on one-sided Americanophobia, silent on or making excuses for the Taliban, and implying that we should mourn the Taliban's downfall as a "victory for imperialism" - that is nonsense, and now very obvious nonsense, both politically and morally. In our "Questions and Answers" on the war, we wrote: "The Taliban's laws are largely impositions from the outside. The Taliban was created among the Afghan refugees in Pakistan, with money from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the US. Its version of Islamic law is drawn more from Saudi Arabia than from Afghan customs". A large number of the Taliban's fighters were not Afghans, but Islamic fundamentalists from other countries; a large number of its Afghan fighters were young men who had come to Pakistan as refugee children, and then been brought up in religious schools there, as alien to Afghan society as the Taliban's Arab volunteers. The quick collapse of the Taliban shows that they were even more significantly an outside force, imposing itself on the population, than we thought. We welcome the fall of the Taliban and the flow of more foreign aid into Afghanistan. We demand more aid. Should we regret opposing the US/UK war? No, we should not. The US commanders started bombing Afghanistan saying they would continue for months or years. That was a stated intention to kill directly as many Afghan civilians as required, and many more indirectly, through famine and disease, by wrecking even more an already wrecked society. Though civilians have been killed, it has not turned out like that. The Taliban regime has proved more fragile and thin than any calculators had expected. That is the nature of war - weak and rotten structures collapse suddenly under the impact of force. At the start of the war, we wrote: "We denounce the Taliban regime! We want to see it overthrown as soon as possible". The cost in Afghan civilian lives of overthrowing it by US bomber aid to the Northern Alliance was reasonably expected to be very high. No serious socialist could have given the US/UK war machine credence or political confidence in advance, even to bring down the Taliban. The US is deep in compromises and horse-trading with scarcely-less-vile Islamic fundamentalists, and not only in Afghanistan. Besides, the war is not over. There will be more civilian casualties. Cluster bombs left unexploded after the 1991 Gulf war killed 1,220 Kuwaitis and 400 Iraqis between 1991 and 1999. How many will be killed by unexploded cluster bombs in Afghanistan? At the very least, the Taliban are likely to stage prolonged and serious guerrilla resistance in Pashtun rural areas. We give no blank cheque to the US to deal with them with its missiles and cluster bombs. The threat to civil liberties in the name of "fighting terrorism" continues - the New Labour government's proposed new legislation would permit the indefinite jailing of asylum seekers "suspected" of terrorist connections, without charge or trial. The Northern Alliance is a coalition of warlord groups - all communalist, mostly fundamentalist, and some scarcely less totalitarian than the Taliban - who killed tens of thousands of civilians through their feuding and reprisals when they dominated Afghanistan between 1992 and 1996. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, who declare that "the retreat of the terrorist Taliban from Kabul is a positive development", also express great alarm about the Northern Alliance coming back to power. "We would like to emphatically ask the UN to send its effective peacekeeping force into the country before the Northern Alliance can repeat the unforgettable crimes they committed..." Perhaps the US can lean on the Northern Alliance hard enough to make it accept a coalition government with Pashtuns and to allow, as Farooq Tariq puts it, "a little liberal time in Afghanistan" while the media spotlight is on them. Past US and UN operations give no room for confidence that the "little liberal time" will last long, or to think that Farooq Tariq is wrong in arguing that: "Once the Northern Alliance strengthens its power base, the real face of these fundamentalists will come out in the open". And more. If everything continues to go smoothly and easily for the USA, that is no guarantee of peace, but just the opposite. In our "Questions and Answers" at the start of the war, we wrote that "smooth and quick victories" for the US/UK war - which we did not expect, but considered as a possibility - would increase the chances that the views of those US government officials who talked, after 11 September, about "ending states" and attacking "a whole series of countries" - specifically, Iraq - would "prevail over more cautious counsel". The cautious still have many power-politics arguments on their side; but the drive to attack Afghanistan came fundamentally from the need of the Bush administration to be seen to do "something" about the 11 September attack on the USA. That need made not yet be satisfied, and there is a real possibility of an attack on Iraq. Any let-up in opposition to US/UK militarism now will make further, broader war more likely. Unless the Taliban's military collapse is suddenly reversed, the US/UK Afghan war is probably not going to spread jihadi-fundamentalism wholesale in the way we feared it would. Pro-Taliban currents will be demoralised and thrown into disarray. However, a US war on Iraq would change that calculation radically. And even immediately, terrorist-fundamentalism is not on the retreat across the board. The Iranian regime, the most powerful bastion of terrorist-fundamentalism internationally, and sponsor of many terrorist-fundamentalist groups in other countries, has gained. On 11 November, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted that Iranian military advisers were working side by side with the US in Afghanistan, and spoke of Iran's "legitimate interest in what happens" in Afghanistan. As a long-term sponsor of key Northern Alliance groups, Iran has greatly strengthened its position in Afghanistan. Before 11 September, the Iranian regime faced increasing internal discredit and a burgeoning movement of opposition to clerical rule among young people. Its reinforcement, the postponement of its downfall, is a boost for terrorist-fundamentalism perhaps bigger than the downfall of the Taliban is a blow. The terrorist-fundamentalist threat has not been abolished. Its roots have not been cut. The Stop the War coalition statement on the fall of Kabul, put out by Lindsey German of the SWP and Andrew Murray, declared that: "At no time has the anti-war movement in this country supported the Taliban..." Sadly, this is a half-truth, or a quarter-truth. The vast majority of those who have joined anti-war demonstrations or supported anti-war resolutions in trade unions have given no support to the Taliban at all. Whatever way they would choose to phrase it, in essence they agree with the view that we must stand for democracy and international solidarity against both US/UK militarism and Islamic fundamentalism. And none, or very few, of the political currents within the anti-war movement would say that they support the Taliban's politics. The biggest of those currents, however, the SWP, opposed condemning the 11 September atrocity, and has opposed all moves to have the anti-war movement distance itself explicitly from Islamic fundamentalism. Denunciation of the US/UK war combined with opposition to condemning the Taliban adds up to siding - positively though implicitly and, to be sure, "critically" - with the Taliban. Other currents who share the SWP's basic view but are more plain-spoken and candid have spelled out the conclusion explicitly. The Stop the War spokespeople now feel the need to denounce the Taliban's "contempt for democracy and human rights". But only now, when the Taliban is in retreat! When the Taliban seemed strong, they made excuses for it. The SWP, for example, explained Islamic fundamentalism in general as a natural reflex of "rage and despair" against imperialism, and the Taliban's seclusion of women as down to the Taliban's leaders' desire to protect women from the lusts of their young soldiers. They sought alliance with the broadest forces of Islam, objecting to any differentiation from the fundamentalists because it would supposedly alienate Muslims. Now they hasten to dissociate from the same forces, defeated, whom they made excuses for when they were strong. This drive to latch on to whatever seems strong among our enemy's enemies is the opposite of working-class politics - the opposite of any politics which can prepare the working class to act as a force in its own right, with its own principles and its own programme. Down with US/UK militarism! Down with Islamic fundamentalism! For self-determination, democracy, and urgent foreign aid in Afghanistan! Defend civil liberties! For international solidarity and socialism! Source: Worker’s Liberty
Weekly Worker Communist Party of Great BritainPeter Manson, "Where Now For the Anti-War Movement?" It is only a matter of time before the last of the Taliban strongholds fall. US air power has given an overwhelming advantage to the Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban forces, and Kunduz and Kandahar will surely soon be in their hands too. But, as the US military offensive in Afghanistan is more and more supplanted by diplomacy, arm-twisting and power-brokering, the anti-war movement must change. It will be totally inadequate to go on saying, ‘Stop the bombing’. The turnout on the November 18 demonstration organised by the Stop the War Coalition was excellent. More than 50,000 marched through London - well up on the October 13 CND event, but it was clear that the sudden, unexpected collapse of Taliban authority had reduced numbers - many people stayed away, believing the war was all but over. Certainly the bombing will be scaled down in its intensity, as US generals target the shrinking enclaves held by Taliban and al Qa’eda fighters. But it is possible that US and British ground forces will be drawn into a long and bloody guerrilla war, as they continue to search out and attempt to eliminate Osama bin Laden. So the Socialist Workers Party is at least in part correct when it says: “Imperialism cannot bring peace” (November 18 demonstration leaflet). By the same measure top-down attempts - led by Britain and the EU - to cobble together a central provisional government that encompasses all Afghan nationalities are beset with difficulties. Apart from the fact that the US seems intent on only pursuing bin Laden and staying clear of “nation building”, any central administration will be based on the armed power of the rival blood-soaked warlords - with the sole proviso that the Taliban hardliners are excluded. The all-party conference will no doubt include the ex-monarch Zahir Shah and a token women’s presence but without substantial injections of capital Afghanistan will remain mired in banditry and ethnic fragmentation. But Tony Blair and Clare Short at least have a programme for Afghanistan. They not only want to rid it of the Taliban and bin Laden, but to impose on it their own version of stability. To gain backing for this they use the language of democracy. Surely there can be nothing more nauseating than the spectacle of Cherie Blair and Laura Bush launching an anti-Taliban campaign for the rights of Afghan women. Such hypocrisy. Official society never had the slightest compunction about backing any of the anti-women mujahedin in the 1980s - the burqa was not a Taliban invention. Then all the various shades of fundamentalists were regarded as staunch allies against the Soviet Union and the progressive People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan government. Nor do the imperialists - neither the US nor the UK - mount campaigns for the rights of Saudi women, who live under a regime only marginally less oppressive than the Taliban. However, as far as the SWP is concerned, imperialism can have a free run when it poses as the champion of democracy. The SWP has not, and does not, put forward a democratic programme for Afghanistan - or any kind of internal programme in fact. All we get is a Bowdlerised anti-imperialism. Indeed, in its shamefaced, unspoken ‘defencism’ - ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ - it has constituted itself as an apologist for the reactionary Taliban regime. Even now, when it is clear that the Taliban enjoyed almost no support among the population, the SWP pretends they were preferable to their rivals: “The north of the country is under the control of the Northern Alliance. They are a bigger bunch of killers than the Taliban” (November 18 leaflet). In my opinion it is totally futile to argue that the National Front is worse than the BNP, or vice versa. The point is, we need to put forward our own, working class, alternative - something the SWP signally fails to do. Its leaflet puts forward a list of immediate tasks: “We need to fight to:
As can be seen, this anti-imperialism hardly concerns itself with Afghanistan and is almost entirely negative - it is more than clear what the SWP is against, but what is it for (apart from “one Palestine” - a simplistic solution which ignores the small matter of the Israeli nation)? Reading SWP propaganda, you get the impression that all of Afghanistan’s problems would go away, if only it was left alone: “America wants to impose control, but Russia, Pakistan and Iran will all want to promote their warlords” (ibid). Socialist Worker goes further: “Rival local powers - Iran, Pakistan, India and Russia - support different factions. Talk of the UN organising a government is about giving each of these states a slice of power, or possibly a slice of a partitioned Afghanistan (original emphasis, November 17). And to stress the point, Socialist Worker features a cartoon of Bush holding a giant knife over the Afghanistan ‘dish’. He is saying to Blair, “Shall I carve?”, as representatives of Iran, Russia and Pakistan slobber in anticipation. Bush is not partitioning Afghanistan. The US wants to get bin Laden. In the process it tilted the balance of power - through bombing and arms supplies - massively against the Taliban. It is the Northern Alliance and other petty warlords who have de facto partitioned the country. It is Blair and the EU which is at the forefront of those pushing for a centralist Afghan state. The present tension between Britain and the US is not over dividing the country up but over political intervention and non-intervention. Once they get bin Laden the rightwing of Bush’s Republican Party will be quite content to let Afghanistan rot. Again we see the nullity of the SWP’s dogma that America’s main war aim is to ensure the laying of an oil pipeline across the country. You might have thought that such a project would be greatly facilitated if the oil barons were able to deal with a single central state or at least a client statelet. Sections of the left developed a similar conspiracy theory regarding alleged plans to break up Yugoslavia. The possibility that there is an internal dynamic underpinning the divisions in Bosnia, Kosova - and Afghanistan - is totally discounted. Of course imperialism sponsored the mujahedin. Of course neighbouring states have interests. But that is not the end of the story. Afghanistan is a multi-national ‘state’ whose peoples remain fiercely insular. Apart from in the cities - especially Kabul - classes and the state have never developed, even embryonically. Males are routinely armed and loyal to local headmen and warlords who, besides seeking external allies, have a proven ability to unite against both central authority - Kabul - and outside powers. When a mediated form of class struggle did break out, it was through the leadership of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Strikes, mass demonstrations, the revolutionary ‘coup’ of April 1978 were all headed by the PDPA - an ‘official’ communist organisation with a mainly western-educated leadership which had deep roots in the working class and urban poor and managed to secure support amongst a wide layer of junior officers and army units. Its reforms - land redistribution, women’s equality, minority national rights - enraged the traditional elite, not least in the countryside - the landlords, mullahs and village elders. But the PDPA was aligned to the Soviet Union. Because of its inconsistent third camp position the SWP backed the mujahedin against the PDPA, ignoring the massive funding they received from the USA. The mujahedin counterrevolution was equated with a national liberation struggle - against the imperialist state capitalism of the USSR. Now that one wing of the counterrevolution, the Taliban, has fallen out with the US, the SWP supports them - quietly, covertly and by implication - because they are against the remaining imperialist superpower. Since the Taliban are against US and British imperialism, and since imperialism still backs the Northern Alliance, the latter can now be written off. Once they were liberation fighters; now they are puppets. Socialist Worker is full of the atrocities committed by the Northern Alliance - yet is silent over the crimes of the Taliban. In fact the only negative reference to the Taliban in last week’s Socialist Worker comes in a reprint of a report from the Scottish Socialist Party’s Alan McCombes on his return from a visit to Pakistan: “Despite the repression they suffer from the Taliban, Hilla [an activist comrade McCombes met in Pakistan] says all women oppose the US bombings: ‘… if they invade the country on the ground, most people will fight with the Taliban against America and Britain.’” That, of course, is what the SWP believes ought to happen: an anti-imperialist bloc, if necessary under the leadership of the Taliban. That hampers or rules out any attempt to unite the Afghan masses on the basis of class. We communists take a rather different view. We are for the democratic struggle of the Afghan workers and peasants to free themselves from the oppression of both the Taliban and the rival warlords, and in opposition to the imperialist onslaught. Such a position is principled and consistent - it does not change like the wind, along with the fortunes of the Northern Alliance, Taliban, the imperialists or anyone else. If the anti-war movement is not to end up in cul de sac - fading from the scene as the bombing winds down - it must take up the politics of consistent democracy. Imperialism wants to impose a settlement in its own interests. We must champion the rights of the Afghan masses.
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