Sunday, January 10, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Without Baburam Bhattarai, the Maoists will repeat history by Prasant Jha
Posted by Ka Frank on Revolution in South Asia January 9, 2010
This article appeared in Nepali Times on January 8, 2010.
Unscripted lines: Without Baburam Bhattarai, the Maoists will repeat history by Prasant Jha
Marxists argue that broader social and economic forces, rather than individuals, shape the course of history. But Nepal may still have been stuck in a bloody conflict but for Dr Baburam Bhattarai and his emphasis on democratic republicanism. The ongoing attempts to marginalise him within the Maoists reveal much about the balance of power and how counterproductive it could be for the peace and constitution-writing process.
Prachanda remains the unchallenged supremo. His control over the organisational apparatus, ability to reconcile interests, and personal charisma are testimony to remarkable political skills.
Kiran has a support base of loyalists like Biplab who call the shots in the party’s base areas, operators like Krishna Mahara, polemicists like CP Gajurel, ethnic champions like Deb Gurung, and key PLA and YCL figures.
Judged in terms of numbers of supporters, Dr Bhattarai is not the most powerful. He does not believe in patronage politics, but is a man of ideas who translates them into practice. Bhattarai conceptualised the war; judged when the time was ripe for peace and convinced the party of it; ensured its aims of a republic and CA were fulfilled; and has given the party respectability way beyond its base. Even now, it is Bhattarai and supporters such as Khimlal Devkota and Ananta who have been doing all the groundwork in the CA or peace negotiations.
Most importantly, Bhattarai has provided Nepali Maoism an intellectual coherence on issues as varied as federalism, the nature of the state, internal colonisation of the Tarai, class and ethnicity, and the nature of the ’semi-colonial’ relationship with India.
In his 1997 essay, ‘Political-Economic Rationale of the War’, Bhattarai identifies Nepal’s key structural problems: the use of Nepal as an exporter of raw materials and a secure market for finished Indian products; the unfavourable balance of trade; control of the Nepali economy through Indian-origin capitalists; the trend of MNCs operating in Nepal through their Indian subsidiaries; unequal water treaties; use of cheap Nepali labour; and the hegemony of Indian monetary policy. Bhattarai’s articulation remains the single most important text on which the Maoist insistence on redefining the relationship with India is based.
That is why it is a bit rich for party rivals to accuse Bhattarai of being an Indian agent. Under the radical garb lie deep fears. Kiran feels ideologically dwarfed by Bhattarai’s creative and so far successful application of Maoism, dubs him a revisionist, and is looking for a role for himself. Prachanda is personally insecure, and is afraid Bhattarai could trump him due to his popularity across party lines, performance in government and international credibility. He is also keen to cosy up to his orthodox colleagues by criticising Bhattarai.
Even if the end goal of radical state restructuring and hegemonic control is common to all Maoists, there are significant differences on how to get there – which have implications for the evolution of the party itself.
Kiran believes that class warfare has to move to the next stage through a violent urban insurrection. Bhattarai understands the need for a broad multi-class, multi-ethnic alliance, and feels that a combination of mass politics, constitutional process, and elections can win the Maoists state power. He recognises geopolitical limits, and will engage with India more constructively in contrast to the abuse in public-suck up in private approach adopted by Prachanda, or the blind chauvinism of Kiran. Bhattarai knows the way to transform Nepal’s structural dependence is through internal resource mobilisation and boosting national competitiveness while using India.
Make no mistake – Dr Bhattarai is a committed Maoist, not a social democrat. But his approach will force the Maoists to address diverse interests, and create checks against their violent impulses. This can however succeed only with more openness on the part of non-Maoists externally, and Prachanda’s backing internally.
By snubbing Bhattarai and his ‘line’ again – as Prachanda did by depriving him of the deputy prime ministership in August 2008 and incorporating Kiran’s views at Kharipati two months later – the Maoists run the risk of undermining their achievements, repeating the mistakes of their 20th century communist counterparts, and failing.
Top Maoist Tusharkanta Bhaatacharya arrested again
first posted on Indian Vanguard
WARANGAL/HYDERABAD: Senior Maoist leader Tusharkanta Bhattacharya was arrested today in Warangal.Interestingly, police officially admitted to having taken Tusharkanta Bhaatacharya into custody in the eveing while the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC), in response to a petition, asked the police send a report by Monday whether they arrested the Maoist leader or not.
Meanwhile, Warangal district SP Shah Nawaz Qasim has confirmed the arrest.Bhattacharya was reportedly picked up by the police at Golconda Crossroads in Hyderabad on Thursday.The Warangal police are planning to produce the arrested Maoist leader before magistrate late in the night.
Earlier, the SHRC in Hyderabad directed the Warangal superintendent of police to submit a report on the whereabouts of the CPI (Maoist) leader in response to a complaint filed by an advocate, Satyanarayana, who said Bhattacharya and he had travelled together in a car from Nallakunta on Thursday.After he got down from the car at Golconda Crossroads, Satyanarayana said he saw some plainclothes policemen taking away the Maoist leader, his car and driver Ramu.
Initially, the SHRC directed the Inspector- General of Police (SIB) to submit a report. “The SIB officials informed the SHRC that it was not they but the Warangal police who picked up the Moaist leader in connection with a case registered in the district some time ago. Then I have asked the SP to file the status report by Monday,’’ Subhashan Reddy said.The Maoist leader was first arrested in Ranchi in Jharkhand on September 17, 2007 and was sent to Warangal jail.
He was acquitted on November 19 last year as the charges against him were not proved. When he raised slogans in favour of Maoists while getting released from the jail, the police registered a case of sedition against him at the Mattewada police station in Warangal
Prachanda renews revolt call
Hours after agreeing join a high-level political mechanism, which is widely seen as a breakthrough in the efforts to find an outlet to the protracted political impasse, Maoist chairman Prachanda aka Pushpa Kamal Dahal warned that his party would launch 'people's revolt' if the country does not get a new constitution on time and the peace process gets derailed.
Addressing a programme organised by the local civil society in Biratnagar Friday afternoon, Dahal said Nepali people would take to the streets if a scenario, which might derail the peace process and scuttle the constitutional-making drive, is created in the country. He added that the parties should be careful not to invite such a scenario.
The Maoist strongman also raised objection to Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal's statement on Thursday that the Maoists would face the fate of the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka if they continued to engage on violence and intimation.Speaking at the same programme, UML chairman Jhala Nath Khanal stressed the need for consensus among the parties to write new constitution and conclude the peace process.
Likewise, Nepali Congress vice-president and parliamentary leader Ram Chandra Poudel said peace process should be the main priority at the moment. Alluding to the recent statements of the Maoist leaders, Poudel maintained that the threat of power capturing and ethnicity-based federalism will not help the peace process.
At the programme the senior leaders of the major parties, who announced the high-level political mechanism from a meeting earlier today, gave their signatures to an appeal of the civil society to the political parties to write the new constitution on time. nepalnews.com
Addressing a programme organised by the local civil society in Biratnagar Friday afternoon, Dahal said Nepali people would take to the streets if a scenario, which might derail the peace process and scuttle the constitutional-making drive, is created in the country. He added that the parties should be careful not to invite such a scenario.
The Maoist strongman also raised objection to Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal's statement on Thursday that the Maoists would face the fate of the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka if they continued to engage on violence and intimation.Speaking at the same programme, UML chairman Jhala Nath Khanal stressed the need for consensus among the parties to write new constitution and conclude the peace process.
Likewise, Nepali Congress vice-president and parliamentary leader Ram Chandra Poudel said peace process should be the main priority at the moment. Alluding to the recent statements of the Maoist leaders, Poudel maintained that the threat of power capturing and ethnicity-based federalism will not help the peace process.
At the programme the senior leaders of the major parties, who announced the high-level political mechanism from a meeting earlier today, gave their signatures to an appeal of the civil society to the political parties to write the new constitution on time. nepalnews.com
Source: Nepal News
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Green Hunt: Silencing tribal voices
picture Himanshu Kumar
Posted by Rajeesh on Indian Vanguard January 7, 2010
Operation Green Hunt is finally put into full gear; the Union home minister is asked to stay away from its area of operation; and a Gandhian begins a hunger strike at its centre. What do these recent developments imply?
First, the harsh truth — the Centre’s, and consequently the media’s, near-silence all through the last month on its heavily tom-tommed proposed armed offensive against the Maoists, was no rethink. The war cries had boomeranged; it made more sense to keep quiet, let the protests fizzle out, and go ahead with it. It was foolish anyway, to have thought that the outrage of intellectuals (and a few retired security men) could outweigh the exciting prospect of big business finally moving in on all those riches buried under the Dandakaranya forests. As planned, the moment the Jharkhand elections got over, the offensive began. But why is the Union home minister, the man behind it, being asked to stay away? That too by the governor of the State at its epicentre?
Governor E S L Narasimhan, former IB chief, knows what he is doing. Last month, the home minister met the man instrumental in raising awareness across the country about the situation in Bastar, the heart of the Maoist stronghold. Inspired by Vinoba Bhave, Himanshu Kumar started his Vanwasi Chetna Ashram in Dantewada 17 years ago to work among the adivasis and thereby curb the influence of the Naxalites there. But his mentor’s teachings would not allow him to keep quiet while the adivasis were hunted out of their homes, raped and brutalised by the police in the name of fighting Maoists and paving the way for ‘development’.
In our democracy, the powers-that-be do sometimes talk to troublemakers. So P Chidambaram talked to Himanshu Kumar, and when invited to come to Dantewada and hear what the adivasis had to say in a jan sunwai (public hearing), agreed. On what grounds could he have refused?
But for Himanshu Kumar, this was no formal invitation. Everywhere he spoke, he had pointed out that for the last five years, no minister had come to see the condition of the adivasis. Now that the ruler was coming, he had to make the jan sunwai a success.
That meant persuading the jan to come for it. But they had already started fleeing — the exodus sparked off not just by rumours of a massive influx of armed forces into their region, but also by what they had seen in the first phase of Operation Green Hunt. In that three-day exercise in September, six COBRA jawans had died, but said the forces, so had 50 Maoists. Strangely, only nine bodies were found. The Maoists took away the rest, said the officers.
The adivasis knew who those nine were — no armed radicals, but people like them, attacked while tending to their fields or at home. A 70-year-old’s breasts were cut off; a 25-year-old was tied to a tree and beheaded. This was no exaggeration by human rights activists; the victims’ relatives have petitioned the Supreme Court; the court has sent notice to the Chhattisgarh government.
But for the adivasis, this is old hat. The Supreme Court last year passed many orders — that adivasis dislocated by the government’s anti-Maoist campaign Salwa Judum be rehabilitated and compensated; their FIRs against the police be filed. Their government had ignored these and been voted back to power. It made sense for the adivasis to flee, rather than wait for the next bunch of COBRAs and other poisonous creatures to enter their homes.
But Gandhians don’t give up, obstacles only spur them on. Himanshu Kumar decided on a padyatra through the affected villages. Activists from around the country would tell the adivasis they weren’t alone, record their stories and encourage them to come for the jan sunwai.
Nothing of the sort happened. Talking to a troublemaker was one thing; allowing him to embolden the people quite another. The state made its own preparations. Four days before the padyatra, a newly formed tribal outfit took out a rally calling for Himanshu’s expulsion from the region. But non-tribal leaders addressed it. That day, Himanshu’s right-hand man, Kopa Kunjam, an adivasi in the forefront of rehabilitating his dislocated people, was picked up, charged with a six-month-old murder of a Salwa Judum leader, and sent to jail. Four tribal girls set to depose in court against their alleged rape by Salwa Judum SPOs, were made to sign on blank papers by the accused. Accommodation booked by Himanshu for the padyatris was cancelled, reportedly on the orders of the district collector.
On the day of the padyatra, Himanshu Kumar could not step out. Policemen guarded his home as a morcha led by Z P president Chhabindra Karma (son of Mahindra Karma, the founder of Salwa Judum), marched to his doorstep. At the same time, 39 activists, headed from Raipur to join Kumar, were made to return halfway, their jeeps seized by police and drivers of public buses warned not to carry them. This was for their own security, the police said, for thousands of tribals had gathered to oppose them. ‘We tribals don’t want outsiders poking their nose in Bastar’, said Chhabindra Karma. A strange objection, given the fact that the people behind his father’s Salwa Judum are ‘traders, contractors and miners’, and its first financiers were the Tatas and Essar — outsiders all. These are not allegations made by ‘Naxal supporters’, but by a government committee on ‘agrarian relations and land reforms’. Its report describes the bid to acquire tribal land for mining as the ‘biggest land grab since Columbus… Villages sitting on tons of iron ore are effectively de-peopled (by Salwa Judum) and available for the highest bidder’.
So there are outsiders and outsiders. As long as Himanshu Kumar remained in Bastar, outsiders of one kind would keep getting drawn there. With Operation Green Hunt fully operational, there could be no question of the Gandhian or others like him being allowed inside the forests. So the next development was Himanshu being asked by his landlord, a Z P employee, to vacate his house. And finally, to foreclose all possibilities, Chidambaram was told by the governor to stay away from the ‘jan sunwai’.
Chidambaram got his face-saver. Had Himanshu been a Gandhian of the new school, he would have used it to save face too, knowing all options had closed for him. But he decided to start a hunger strike, to introspect on where he had gone wrong. Perhaps it would inspire the government, the Maoists and the corporates to introspect too, he said. Governments aren’t given to introspection, so events will reach their logical conclusion. The adivasis will see all those legally fighting for them silenced or prevented from meeting them — the latest being Delhi School of Economics professor Nandini Sundar, a petitioner against Salwa Judum. This is exactly what the Maoists have been waiting for
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
IN DEFENCE OF THE TALIBAN, AGAINST NATO IMPERIALISM BY HARRY POWELL
In Afghanistan the war of national resistance to imperialist invasion and occupation, led by the Taliban, is intensifying. The NATO led forces are having to send in around 40,000 extra troops to try to beat back the popular insurgency led by the Taliban. Yet despite widespread opposition among progressive people in the imperialist countries to the imperialist assault upon Afghanistan there is a definite coolness, if not hostility, to the Taliban who are leading the armed struggle against the imperialist forces.
It is, of course, the reactionary ideological outlook and practice of this fundamentalist Islamic movement that is the reason for the lack of enthusiasm for the anti-imperialist struggle being waged by the Taliban. In particular it is their view as to the position of women in society, a very subordinate one to men, which outrages progressive people in the “advanced” capitalist countries. On all major social issues – civil and women’s rights, education, culture, etc. - the Taliban are far more reactionary in theory than their imperialist opponents. For this reason some “leftists” actually hope – more or less covertly - that the imperialists will triumph in Afghanistan on the grounds that this would help the people of Afghanistan to throw off some of the shackles of feudalism.
This sort of perspective on the Taliban is very much one taken from the standpoint of people living in developed, Western capitalist societies. It fails to take into account the fact that Afghanistan is still in the main a traditional feudal society in which the vast majority of people are peasant farmers deeply immersed in Islamic religion. Any project to bring about the liberation of the Afghani people has to take into account the complex and crosscutting contradictions present in that society – ones of class, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc.. The modern history of Afghanistan demonstrates that attempts from “above” to impose progressive change on the Afghani people backfire and have actually resulted in the strengthening of oppressive feudal structures rather than their weakening. In no aspect of Afghani life is this more apparent than in the case of women.
WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN
The young Amanullah became the ruler (Amir and later King) of Afghanistan in 1919 and embarked upon an ambitious modernization programme. He managed to free the control of the country’s foreign affairs from British imperialism. By the mid-nineteen twenties he was trying to impose by decree bold measures of women’s liberation – lifting of the veil, education for girls, an end to polygamy, raising minimum marriage ages, etc.. This produced a very strong reaction among the mullahs and tribal leaders who successfully conspired, with the active encouragement of the British Raj, to remove Amanullah from power.
During the nineteen sixties a government headed by Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan, a relation of the then King, again attempted to introduce the same sort of reforms with some degree of success mainly in the capital Kabul but not in the rural areas where the great majority of the people lived. In 1978 the Parcham faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), who claimed to be Marxists, staged a military coup and established a government in Kabul . They announced a wide ranging set of reforms on land tenure, the position of women and usury. This provoked an immediate hostile reaction in rural areas – where the PDPA had no mass base of support – and the Government had to call for Soviet military intervention to try to maintain their position. The death and destruction that the resulting war of national resistance brought to Afghanistan in the nineteen eighties is well known. It also brought about a revival and strengthening of traditional Islamic practices, in reaction to the attempt to impose reforms from above, especially placing tight restrictions on the place of women in society.
It is very clear that in Afghanistan misguided attempts to liberate women by means of central government decree have produced the opposite, a strengthening of the subordinate position of women as specified by fundamentalist interpretations of traditional Islam. It is strange that many Marxists supported such initiatives from above given that it is a central tenet of Marxism that oppressed people have to be the agents of their own liberation if they are to be truly free, that liberation has to come from below. In fact there were some people in Afghanistan who did have a good grasp of this principle. During the nineteen sixties and seventies a new democratic movement called Eternal Flame, led by Maoists, was working among the rural masses to bring about democratic reforms such as land redistribution and women’s liberation. The PDPA regarded Eternal Flame as mortal enemies and one of the first tasks the Soviet invaders carried out was for the KGB to round up thousands of Eternal Flame cadres and execute them. Thanks to the PDPA and their Soviet allies “communism” was widely seen as the Number One Enemy of the Afghani people. Consequently the surviving remnants of Eternal Flame had to pretend that they were Muslims in order to be able to fight the Soviet invaders!
WHO ARE THE TALIBAN?
Bogged down in a hopeless war they could not hope to win, Soviet forces had withdrawn from Afghanistan by early 1989. The Soviet Union continued to supply the PDPA regime until early 1992 which enabled it to hold onto the capital Kabul . Meanwhile rival Mujaheddin warlords, especially Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud, were closing in on the remaining areas held by the PDPA forces while at the same time fighting each other to gain overall supremacy in the country. After the fall of the PDPA Government in 1992 the rival warlords continued to fight over who would be dominant. The country was plunged into even greater chaos than during the previous period. The warlord armies were able to oppress and rob the people without any significant opposition. Although proclaiming themselves as defenders of Islam the warlord armies were no respecters of women, engaging in widespread prostitution and rape on a large scale.
It was in order to oppose the criminal rule of the warlords that in 1994 some veterans of the anti-Soviet war came together. They were led by Mullah Mohammed Omar and given their devotion as students of Islam called themselves the “Taliban” (students). Within a few months they had rallied large numbers of the people and inflicted heavy defeats on the warlord armies. By 1996 they controlled most of the country, with the warlords hanging on in the north, and in September 1996 took the capital Kabul . There can be no doubt that at this time the Taliban was a hugely popular movement in Afghanistan .
The Taliban regime imposed a strict interpretation of Sharia law banning employment outside the home, education and sports for women as well as restrictions on the mass media. The movement was essentially Pushtun-based and they tended to treat other ethnic groups, e.g. Hazaras, as inferiors. Also they were very ruthless in suppressing any opposition to their rule. Although popular in the countryside, the Taliban regime was experienced as oppressive by many people in the relatively Westernised cities of Kabul and Kandahar . One thing they did achieve was to virtually eradicate opium poppy cultivation because it is offensive to their religious beliefs. Also they cracked down on criminal gangs and established civil security throughout the areas they controlled.
By contemporary Western standards the Taliban are no angels. They are fiercely intolerant of dissent from their rule. As Sunni Muslims they regard Shia Muslims as heretics and the Hazaras as non-Muslims. They enforced a very restricted, traditional Islamic life style upon women but they do not prostitute or rape them. Compared with the criminal, murderous warlords – who in theory as just as committed to Sharia law - their rule was relatively civilized.
AFGHANISTAN SINCE 2001
Following the 9/11 attack by al-Quaeda on the Twin Towers the US Government, together with Britain and some other imperialist governments, supported the Northern Alliance warlords with US Special Forces and massive bombing to overthrow the Taliban regime. The justification for this attack was that the Taliban had tolerated training camps in Afghanistan run by Osama bin Laden’s organization al-Quaeda. The Taliban regime was overthrown within a couple of months and the Taliban dispersed into the countryside. A warlord government was installed in Kabul and under the leadership of Hamid Karzai and has proceeded to rule the country with the same mixture of corruption and criminality as when they were in power back in the early nineteen nineties. Under this regime the warlords have become the biggest suppliers of illegal heroin to the rest of the world. Hilary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has described it as a “narco-state” and called for it to be cleaned-up. The US-led NATO coalition occupying Afghanistan has recognized that the national elections held in 2009 were clearly fraudulent. Trying to impose a system of capitalist parliamentary democracy on a feudal society such as Afghanistan makes as much sense as would trying to impose a system of government by tribal elders on contemporary America or Britain.
Given the deterioration in the lives of most Afghanis since 2001, it is hardly surprising that the Taliban have made a come-back with the insurgency they lead spreading to many parts of the country. They may control around seventy per cent of the rural areas, particularly the ones where there are Pushtuns living. It would be impossible for the Taliban to sustain armed resistance on this scale if they did not have mass support among large sections of the people. The NATO coalition admit that they are not succeeding in crushing the resistance and in 2010 are sending in at least another 37,000 troops. This situation is hardly congruent with dubious opinion polls which claim that the great majority of the Afghani people are opposed to the Taliban-led resistance to imperialist invasion. It should be remembered that the Taliban are not one highly centralized, monolithic organization but rather a loose amalgam of different factions. (The NATO imperialists are aware of this as they hope to divide and rule by winning over some sections of the Taliban to the Karzai Government.) Also it seems that many peasant farmers who are not specifically Taliban supporters are taking up arms and joining the insurgency.
SUPPORT THE TALIBAN?
The fact of the matter is that the Taliban is the only effective resistance to the imperialist invasion and occupation of Afghanistan . There are other groups who claim to oppose the imperialists, e.g. Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan, but they have no effective military presence inside the country. Whether or not the Taliban are supported by the majority of Afghanis is difficult, if not impossible, to establish. However, this is not the essential point. National resistance movements often involve the active participation of only a minority of a country’s population, e.g. France during World War II. The point is whether or not the activity of the resistance is in the objective interests of the people.
If after 2001 the Taliban had faded away then Afghanistan would be ruled by the fractious, incompetent and corrupt warlords supported by the NATO imperialists. The situation would be rather like the one that prevailed in the early nineteen nineties which originally gave rise to the Taliban. We should not deceive ourselves that the imperialists would make any serious attempt to clean-up such a regime. Their claims that this is what they want to do with the current warlord regime are made only because of the advance of the Taliban. More likely is that apart from establishing some military bases NATO would leave the Afghanis to the mercies of the warlords. The protestations of the imperialists that they want to help “develop” Afghanistan ring hollow. Even their puppet President Hamid Kazai has complained that much of the promised international development aid has not materialized.
It is very clear that the people of Afghanistan are the victims of imperialist aggression. In the case of the British State it has been attacking Afghanistan , on and off, ever since 1838. The people of Afghanistan have never constituted any threat to the people of Britain or any other country. None of those who carried out the 9/11 attack or subsequent terrorist acts consequent upon it - in Britain , Spain , America , etc. – have been Afghanis. Some of these people have trained with the Taliban in Afghanistan or Pakistan but they were not agents of the Taliban. They were Muslims outraged by imperialist attacks on Muslim people – in Palestine , Somalia , Iraq , Afghanistan , etc. – who independently decided to take retaliatory action. What is remarkable is that so far the Taliban have not sent undercover teams to the imperialist countries to carry out counterattacks.
Recent imperialist incursions into Afghanistan – first by the Soviet Union and then by NATO – have done nothing except bring death and destruction to the Afghani people. The same is true of the rule of the rival warlords within the country. The truth is that it was when the Taliban ruled most of the country during the late nineteen nineties that there was relative peace and stability. Thus, in terms of what is practically possible at the present time, it has to be concluded that the Taliban movement, both as an effective anti-imperialist force and as a future effective government, is the best hope for the Afghani people in the foreseeable future. Thus progressive people in the rest of the world should desist from demonizing the Taliban, from representing them as just as bad as the imperialist invaders and the war lords, and instead focus their efforts on trying to undermine the imperialist assault on Afghanistan . The best place to do this is within the imperialist countries.
OPPOSE NATO IMPERIALISM!
Following 9/11 and the launch of the so-called “War on Terrorism” large anti-war movements were formed in the imperialist countries such as the Stop the War Coalition in Britain which will be focused upon here. Whilst campaigning against the imperialist attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan these organizations have taken up a less than enthusiastic position with respect to the elements within Iraq and Afghanistan waging armed resistance to the imperialist military forces. This is because from a Western, secular point of view the various resistance groups which are religious and nationalist are the “wrong” type; they are not socialist and communist. Although the right of the victims of imperialism to resist is grudgingly recognized, these peace movements stop short of an outright anti-imperialist position of calling for the victory of the national resistances. Instead they call for the withdrawal of imperialist forces as expressed in the Stop the War Coalition’s current slogan of “Bring the Troops Home”.
Furthermore, Stop the War has taken up an essentially neutral stance with respect to the British armed forces. They are represented as the innocent pawns of the British Government who are being misused. This is the position of the Military Families Against the War wing of Stop the War. It consists of relations of military personnel who have been killed and injured in these wars. They complain that the troops are not properly equipped and protected. Their opposition to the wars is not so much that they are an unjust attack on innocent people but that they are pointless and cannot be won. They do not recognize the British armed forces for what essentially they are; an instrument to enforce the rule of the capitalist state both at home and abroad, an enemy of the great mass of the people in Britain and elsewhere.
In the meantime in Britain the British Government and media have been waging a vigorous campaign to boost the image of the British Army in the eyes of the British public. For the last couple of years or so troops returning from Afghanistan have been put on public parade and hailed as “heroes”. No opportunity is lost to project the military as selfless, principled people whose most fervent desire is to help the Afghani people, especially women. (Since when has the British Army shown any particular concern for the rights of women?) This propaganda has been highly effective as can be seen by the thousands of people who turn out on the streets to welcome returning troops. The opinion polls show that a majority of people in Britain favour a withdrawal of British forces for Afghanistan . But for what reasons? It is because they are concerned about British military personnel being injured and killed. For the most part the opposition to the British military presence is not because of the death and destruction they are dealing out to the Afghani people. If as a result of the increase in NATO forces in Afghanistan British military casualties fall and Afghani ones rise then presumably the opposition in Britain to British troops being in that country would diminish.
In Britain it is necessary to campaign against the British Armed Forces and those people who support them. The soldiers should be clearly and firmly told by means such as picketing recruiting offices, military parades, barracks etc. that what they are doing is unacceptable. They should be encouraged to disobey orders and desert. Even though the troops are heavily indoctrinated some of them do have serious doubts about what they are doing. The British media have dropped any pretence at objective reporting of what is happening in Afghanistan so it is necessary to publicise what British and other NATO forces are actually doing on the ground as well as the criminal behaviour of the corrupt regime which they keep in power. In Britain there are large numbers of Muslims who are shocked by what NATO imperialism has done to their co-religionists in Iraq and Afghanistan but they keep their heads down for fear of being seen as disloyal. One result of the “War Against Terrorism” has been for people of Muslim background in Britain , especially young people, to retreat from the wider society into their traditional cultures. The British Muslims should be encouraged to stand up, together with other people, to oppose the unwarranted attack on Afghanistan by the British armed forces.
WHAT FUTURE FOR AFGHANISTAN ?
The likely future for the people of Afghanistan is unenviable. Given their longstanding historical tradition of opposing imperialist invaders, especially the British, they are unlikely to succumb to imperialist occupation. (NATO now have far more troops, mercenaries and other supporting personnel in Afghanistan than did the Soviet Union during the nineteen eighties.) Past experience of rule by rival warlords, with or without imperialist support, would be a grim prospect. The other possibility is the Taliban prevailing against both the external and internal enemies of the Afghani people.
Given their ethic and religious sectarianism it is unlikely that the Taliban will be able to unite all of the Afghani people against their enemies. But the experience of the nineteen nineties gives some reasons for believing that they could establish a regime that would bring peace and stability to most of the country. This would be a very rigid, feudal way of life abhorrent to most Westerners but one probably preferable to most Afghanis than the present chaos. Whether or not more progressive secular political forces could develop in such a situation is difficult to predict. In the eight years since the fall of the Taliban Government nothing significant of this kind has emerged so imperialist occupation certainly does not seem to provide a favourable environment for the emergence of new political trends.
Progressive people in the imperialist countries such as Britain should stop using their negative view of the Taliban as an excuse to mount only half-hearted opposition to the NATO war on Afghanistan . It should not be forgotten that the NATO imperialists are the aggressors and the Taliban are trying to defend their country against foreign invasion and occupation. What we should be doing is mounting a vigorous campaign against the governments and armed forces prosecuting this criminal war. Solidarity with the people of Afghanistan begins at home.
DOWN WITH NATO IMPERIALISM!
VICTORY TO THE AFGHANI PEOPLE!
Harry Powell
January 2010
It is, of course, the reactionary ideological outlook and practice of this fundamentalist Islamic movement that is the reason for the lack of enthusiasm for the anti-imperialist struggle being waged by the Taliban. In particular it is their view as to the position of women in society, a very subordinate one to men, which outrages progressive people in the “advanced” capitalist countries. On all major social issues – civil and women’s rights, education, culture, etc. - the Taliban are far more reactionary in theory than their imperialist opponents. For this reason some “leftists” actually hope – more or less covertly - that the imperialists will triumph in Afghanistan on the grounds that this would help the people of Afghanistan to throw off some of the shackles of feudalism.
This sort of perspective on the Taliban is very much one taken from the standpoint of people living in developed, Western capitalist societies. It fails to take into account the fact that Afghanistan is still in the main a traditional feudal society in which the vast majority of people are peasant farmers deeply immersed in Islamic religion. Any project to bring about the liberation of the Afghani people has to take into account the complex and crosscutting contradictions present in that society – ones of class, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc.. The modern history of Afghanistan demonstrates that attempts from “above” to impose progressive change on the Afghani people backfire and have actually resulted in the strengthening of oppressive feudal structures rather than their weakening. In no aspect of Afghani life is this more apparent than in the case of women.
WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN
The young Amanullah became the ruler (Amir and later King) of Afghanistan in 1919 and embarked upon an ambitious modernization programme. He managed to free the control of the country’s foreign affairs from British imperialism. By the mid-nineteen twenties he was trying to impose by decree bold measures of women’s liberation – lifting of the veil, education for girls, an end to polygamy, raising minimum marriage ages, etc.. This produced a very strong reaction among the mullahs and tribal leaders who successfully conspired, with the active encouragement of the British Raj, to remove Amanullah from power.
During the nineteen sixties a government headed by Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan, a relation of the then King, again attempted to introduce the same sort of reforms with some degree of success mainly in the capital Kabul but not in the rural areas where the great majority of the people lived. In 1978 the Parcham faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), who claimed to be Marxists, staged a military coup and established a government in Kabul . They announced a wide ranging set of reforms on land tenure, the position of women and usury. This provoked an immediate hostile reaction in rural areas – where the PDPA had no mass base of support – and the Government had to call for Soviet military intervention to try to maintain their position. The death and destruction that the resulting war of national resistance brought to Afghanistan in the nineteen eighties is well known. It also brought about a revival and strengthening of traditional Islamic practices, in reaction to the attempt to impose reforms from above, especially placing tight restrictions on the place of women in society.
It is very clear that in Afghanistan misguided attempts to liberate women by means of central government decree have produced the opposite, a strengthening of the subordinate position of women as specified by fundamentalist interpretations of traditional Islam. It is strange that many Marxists supported such initiatives from above given that it is a central tenet of Marxism that oppressed people have to be the agents of their own liberation if they are to be truly free, that liberation has to come from below. In fact there were some people in Afghanistan who did have a good grasp of this principle. During the nineteen sixties and seventies a new democratic movement called Eternal Flame, led by Maoists, was working among the rural masses to bring about democratic reforms such as land redistribution and women’s liberation. The PDPA regarded Eternal Flame as mortal enemies and one of the first tasks the Soviet invaders carried out was for the KGB to round up thousands of Eternal Flame cadres and execute them. Thanks to the PDPA and their Soviet allies “communism” was widely seen as the Number One Enemy of the Afghani people. Consequently the surviving remnants of Eternal Flame had to pretend that they were Muslims in order to be able to fight the Soviet invaders!
WHO ARE THE TALIBAN?
Bogged down in a hopeless war they could not hope to win, Soviet forces had withdrawn from Afghanistan by early 1989. The Soviet Union continued to supply the PDPA regime until early 1992 which enabled it to hold onto the capital Kabul . Meanwhile rival Mujaheddin warlords, especially Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud, were closing in on the remaining areas held by the PDPA forces while at the same time fighting each other to gain overall supremacy in the country. After the fall of the PDPA Government in 1992 the rival warlords continued to fight over who would be dominant. The country was plunged into even greater chaos than during the previous period. The warlord armies were able to oppress and rob the people without any significant opposition. Although proclaiming themselves as defenders of Islam the warlord armies were no respecters of women, engaging in widespread prostitution and rape on a large scale.
It was in order to oppose the criminal rule of the warlords that in 1994 some veterans of the anti-Soviet war came together. They were led by Mullah Mohammed Omar and given their devotion as students of Islam called themselves the “Taliban” (students). Within a few months they had rallied large numbers of the people and inflicted heavy defeats on the warlord armies. By 1996 they controlled most of the country, with the warlords hanging on in the north, and in September 1996 took the capital Kabul . There can be no doubt that at this time the Taliban was a hugely popular movement in Afghanistan .
The Taliban regime imposed a strict interpretation of Sharia law banning employment outside the home, education and sports for women as well as restrictions on the mass media. The movement was essentially Pushtun-based and they tended to treat other ethnic groups, e.g. Hazaras, as inferiors. Also they were very ruthless in suppressing any opposition to their rule. Although popular in the countryside, the Taliban regime was experienced as oppressive by many people in the relatively Westernised cities of Kabul and Kandahar . One thing they did achieve was to virtually eradicate opium poppy cultivation because it is offensive to their religious beliefs. Also they cracked down on criminal gangs and established civil security throughout the areas they controlled.
By contemporary Western standards the Taliban are no angels. They are fiercely intolerant of dissent from their rule. As Sunni Muslims they regard Shia Muslims as heretics and the Hazaras as non-Muslims. They enforced a very restricted, traditional Islamic life style upon women but they do not prostitute or rape them. Compared with the criminal, murderous warlords – who in theory as just as committed to Sharia law - their rule was relatively civilized.
AFGHANISTAN SINCE 2001
Following the 9/11 attack by al-Quaeda on the Twin Towers the US Government, together with Britain and some other imperialist governments, supported the Northern Alliance warlords with US Special Forces and massive bombing to overthrow the Taliban regime. The justification for this attack was that the Taliban had tolerated training camps in Afghanistan run by Osama bin Laden’s organization al-Quaeda. The Taliban regime was overthrown within a couple of months and the Taliban dispersed into the countryside. A warlord government was installed in Kabul and under the leadership of Hamid Karzai and has proceeded to rule the country with the same mixture of corruption and criminality as when they were in power back in the early nineteen nineties. Under this regime the warlords have become the biggest suppliers of illegal heroin to the rest of the world. Hilary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has described it as a “narco-state” and called for it to be cleaned-up. The US-led NATO coalition occupying Afghanistan has recognized that the national elections held in 2009 were clearly fraudulent. Trying to impose a system of capitalist parliamentary democracy on a feudal society such as Afghanistan makes as much sense as would trying to impose a system of government by tribal elders on contemporary America or Britain.
Given the deterioration in the lives of most Afghanis since 2001, it is hardly surprising that the Taliban have made a come-back with the insurgency they lead spreading to many parts of the country. They may control around seventy per cent of the rural areas, particularly the ones where there are Pushtuns living. It would be impossible for the Taliban to sustain armed resistance on this scale if they did not have mass support among large sections of the people. The NATO coalition admit that they are not succeeding in crushing the resistance and in 2010 are sending in at least another 37,000 troops. This situation is hardly congruent with dubious opinion polls which claim that the great majority of the Afghani people are opposed to the Taliban-led resistance to imperialist invasion. It should be remembered that the Taliban are not one highly centralized, monolithic organization but rather a loose amalgam of different factions. (The NATO imperialists are aware of this as they hope to divide and rule by winning over some sections of the Taliban to the Karzai Government.) Also it seems that many peasant farmers who are not specifically Taliban supporters are taking up arms and joining the insurgency.
SUPPORT THE TALIBAN?
The fact of the matter is that the Taliban is the only effective resistance to the imperialist invasion and occupation of Afghanistan . There are other groups who claim to oppose the imperialists, e.g. Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan, but they have no effective military presence inside the country. Whether or not the Taliban are supported by the majority of Afghanis is difficult, if not impossible, to establish. However, this is not the essential point. National resistance movements often involve the active participation of only a minority of a country’s population, e.g. France during World War II. The point is whether or not the activity of the resistance is in the objective interests of the people.
If after 2001 the Taliban had faded away then Afghanistan would be ruled by the fractious, incompetent and corrupt warlords supported by the NATO imperialists. The situation would be rather like the one that prevailed in the early nineteen nineties which originally gave rise to the Taliban. We should not deceive ourselves that the imperialists would make any serious attempt to clean-up such a regime. Their claims that this is what they want to do with the current warlord regime are made only because of the advance of the Taliban. More likely is that apart from establishing some military bases NATO would leave the Afghanis to the mercies of the warlords. The protestations of the imperialists that they want to help “develop” Afghanistan ring hollow. Even their puppet President Hamid Kazai has complained that much of the promised international development aid has not materialized.
It is very clear that the people of Afghanistan are the victims of imperialist aggression. In the case of the British State it has been attacking Afghanistan , on and off, ever since 1838. The people of Afghanistan have never constituted any threat to the people of Britain or any other country. None of those who carried out the 9/11 attack or subsequent terrorist acts consequent upon it - in Britain , Spain , America , etc. – have been Afghanis. Some of these people have trained with the Taliban in Afghanistan or Pakistan but they were not agents of the Taliban. They were Muslims outraged by imperialist attacks on Muslim people – in Palestine , Somalia , Iraq , Afghanistan , etc. – who independently decided to take retaliatory action. What is remarkable is that so far the Taliban have not sent undercover teams to the imperialist countries to carry out counterattacks.
Recent imperialist incursions into Afghanistan – first by the Soviet Union and then by NATO – have done nothing except bring death and destruction to the Afghani people. The same is true of the rule of the rival warlords within the country. The truth is that it was when the Taliban ruled most of the country during the late nineteen nineties that there was relative peace and stability. Thus, in terms of what is practically possible at the present time, it has to be concluded that the Taliban movement, both as an effective anti-imperialist force and as a future effective government, is the best hope for the Afghani people in the foreseeable future. Thus progressive people in the rest of the world should desist from demonizing the Taliban, from representing them as just as bad as the imperialist invaders and the war lords, and instead focus their efforts on trying to undermine the imperialist assault on Afghanistan . The best place to do this is within the imperialist countries.
OPPOSE NATO IMPERIALISM!
Following 9/11 and the launch of the so-called “War on Terrorism” large anti-war movements were formed in the imperialist countries such as the Stop the War Coalition in Britain which will be focused upon here. Whilst campaigning against the imperialist attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan these organizations have taken up a less than enthusiastic position with respect to the elements within Iraq and Afghanistan waging armed resistance to the imperialist military forces. This is because from a Western, secular point of view the various resistance groups which are religious and nationalist are the “wrong” type; they are not socialist and communist. Although the right of the victims of imperialism to resist is grudgingly recognized, these peace movements stop short of an outright anti-imperialist position of calling for the victory of the national resistances. Instead they call for the withdrawal of imperialist forces as expressed in the Stop the War Coalition’s current slogan of “Bring the Troops Home”.
Furthermore, Stop the War has taken up an essentially neutral stance with respect to the British armed forces. They are represented as the innocent pawns of the British Government who are being misused. This is the position of the Military Families Against the War wing of Stop the War. It consists of relations of military personnel who have been killed and injured in these wars. They complain that the troops are not properly equipped and protected. Their opposition to the wars is not so much that they are an unjust attack on innocent people but that they are pointless and cannot be won. They do not recognize the British armed forces for what essentially they are; an instrument to enforce the rule of the capitalist state both at home and abroad, an enemy of the great mass of the people in Britain and elsewhere.
In the meantime in Britain the British Government and media have been waging a vigorous campaign to boost the image of the British Army in the eyes of the British public. For the last couple of years or so troops returning from Afghanistan have been put on public parade and hailed as “heroes”. No opportunity is lost to project the military as selfless, principled people whose most fervent desire is to help the Afghani people, especially women. (Since when has the British Army shown any particular concern for the rights of women?) This propaganda has been highly effective as can be seen by the thousands of people who turn out on the streets to welcome returning troops. The opinion polls show that a majority of people in Britain favour a withdrawal of British forces for Afghanistan . But for what reasons? It is because they are concerned about British military personnel being injured and killed. For the most part the opposition to the British military presence is not because of the death and destruction they are dealing out to the Afghani people. If as a result of the increase in NATO forces in Afghanistan British military casualties fall and Afghani ones rise then presumably the opposition in Britain to British troops being in that country would diminish.
In Britain it is necessary to campaign against the British Armed Forces and those people who support them. The soldiers should be clearly and firmly told by means such as picketing recruiting offices, military parades, barracks etc. that what they are doing is unacceptable. They should be encouraged to disobey orders and desert. Even though the troops are heavily indoctrinated some of them do have serious doubts about what they are doing. The British media have dropped any pretence at objective reporting of what is happening in Afghanistan so it is necessary to publicise what British and other NATO forces are actually doing on the ground as well as the criminal behaviour of the corrupt regime which they keep in power. In Britain there are large numbers of Muslims who are shocked by what NATO imperialism has done to their co-religionists in Iraq and Afghanistan but they keep their heads down for fear of being seen as disloyal. One result of the “War Against Terrorism” has been for people of Muslim background in Britain , especially young people, to retreat from the wider society into their traditional cultures. The British Muslims should be encouraged to stand up, together with other people, to oppose the unwarranted attack on Afghanistan by the British armed forces.
WHAT FUTURE FOR AFGHANISTAN ?
The likely future for the people of Afghanistan is unenviable. Given their longstanding historical tradition of opposing imperialist invaders, especially the British, they are unlikely to succumb to imperialist occupation. (NATO now have far more troops, mercenaries and other supporting personnel in Afghanistan than did the Soviet Union during the nineteen eighties.) Past experience of rule by rival warlords, with or without imperialist support, would be a grim prospect. The other possibility is the Taliban prevailing against both the external and internal enemies of the Afghani people.
Given their ethic and religious sectarianism it is unlikely that the Taliban will be able to unite all of the Afghani people against their enemies. But the experience of the nineteen nineties gives some reasons for believing that they could establish a regime that would bring peace and stability to most of the country. This would be a very rigid, feudal way of life abhorrent to most Westerners but one probably preferable to most Afghanis than the present chaos. Whether or not more progressive secular political forces could develop in such a situation is difficult to predict. In the eight years since the fall of the Taliban Government nothing significant of this kind has emerged so imperialist occupation certainly does not seem to provide a favourable environment for the emergence of new political trends.
Progressive people in the imperialist countries such as Britain should stop using their negative view of the Taliban as an excuse to mount only half-hearted opposition to the NATO war on Afghanistan . It should not be forgotten that the NATO imperialists are the aggressors and the Taliban are trying to defend their country against foreign invasion and occupation. What we should be doing is mounting a vigorous campaign against the governments and armed forces prosecuting this criminal war. Solidarity with the people of Afghanistan begins at home.
DOWN WITH NATO IMPERIALISM!
VICTORY TO THE AFGHANI PEOPLE!
Harry Powell
January 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Nepal Maoist nationwide protest to concentrate on protecting national sovereignty
The Unified CPN (Maoist) on Tuesday decided to focus the fourth phase of their nationwide agitation "to protect national sovereignty and integrity" upon reaching the conclusion that it is in "serious danger".
Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda (C) speaking at a press conference organised after the central committee meeting at the party headquarters, Koteshwor, Tuesday, 05 Jan 10. Also seen in the picture are Maoist vice chairmen-duo Mohan Baidya and Dr Baburam Bhattarai.
The central committee (CC) meeting of the party that concluded at the party headquarters in Paris Danda, Koteshwor today took the decision to this effect.
The meeting also finalized the protest program for the fourth phase of their nationwide agitation today and endorsed the political report tabled by party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal.
Informing the reporters outside the Maoist headquarters about the decision taken by the CC, Dahal said the issue of national sovereignty "is more pressing than civilian supremacy" at the current juncture and hence the fourth phase of agitation of the party will focus entirely on the issue.
Claiming that the possibility of a formation of a Maoist-led government has increased, Dahal said that his party is ready to join the government under his leadership.
Refuting reports that quoted him as telling his party activists that India had offered to make senior Maoist leader Dr Baburam Bhattarai the prime minister, Dahal said the media misinterpreted his remarks and he never said that.
Later, at a press conference organized to publicize the protest programmes for the fourth phase of the party agitation, Dr Bhattarai said that media reports about India exerting pressure to make him the prime minister in the new government (after the fall of current UML led government) was "mere rumors" and that he was "extremely sad" owing to the incident which he claimed was done to defame him.
As per the protest programme for the fourth phase of their nationwide agitation, the Maoists will organize mass meetings to expose as well as build awareness regarding large tracts of Nepali territory encroached by India, visit Kalapani and other border areas where Nepali land has been encroached by India, burn "unequal" treaties signed between the two countries and stage sit-in in front of the government administrative center in Singh Durbar and the Indian embassy
Source : Nepal News
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