Afghanistan, Another Untold Story(posted in 2009)

 

Barack Obama is on record as advocating a military escalation in Afghanistan. Before sinking

any deeper into that quagmire, we might do well to learn something about recent Afghanihistory and the role played by the United States.

Less than a month after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and thePentagon, US leaders began an all-out aerial assault upon Afghanistan, the country purportedly harboring Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization. More than twenty yearsearlier, in 1980, the United States intervened to stop a Soviet “invasion” of that country. Evensome leading progressive writers, who normally take a more critical view of US policy abroad,treated the US intervention against the Soviet-supported government as “a good thing.” Theactual story is not such a good thing.

Some Real History 

Since feudal times the landholding system in Afghanistan had remained unchanged, with morethan 75 percent of the land owned by big landlords who comprised only 3 percent of the ruralpopulation. In the mid-1960s, democratic revolutionary elements coalesced to form thePeople’s Democratic Party (PDP). In 1973, the king was deposed, but the government thatreplaced him proved to be autocratic, mismanaged, and unpopular. It in turn was forced out in1978 after a massive demonstration in front of the presidential palace, and after factions of thearmy intervened on the side of the demonstrators.

The military officers who took charge invited the PDP to form a new government under theleadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a poet and novelist. This is how a Marxist-led coalitionof national democratic forces came into office. “It was a totally indigenous happening. Not eventhe CIA blamed the USSR for it,” writes John Ryan, a retired professor at the University of 

 Winnipeg, who was conducting an agricultural research project in Afghanistan at about thattime.

The Taraki government proceeded to legalize labor unions, and set up a minimum wage, aprogressive income tax, a literacy campaign, and programs that gave ordinary people greateraccess to health care, housing, and public sanitation. Fledgling peasant cooperatives werestarted and price reductions on some key foods were imposed.

The government also continued a campaign begun by the king to emancipate women from theirage-old tribal bondage. It provided public education for girls and for the children of varioustribes.

 A report in the San Francisco Chronicle (17 November 2001) noted that under the Tarakiregime Kabul had been “a cosmopolitan city. Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Womenstudied agriculture, engineering and business at the city’s university. Afghan women heldgovernment jobs—-in the 1980s, there were seven female members of parliament. Womendrove cars, traveled and went on dates. Fifty percent of university students were women.”

The Taraki government moved to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppy. Until then Afghanistan had been producing more than 70 percent of the opium needed for the world’sheroin supply. The government also abolished all debts owed by farmers, and began developing

 

Copyright © 2008 Michael Parenti. All rights reserved.