Re: [A-List] A Chinese Marxism view: Problems ofint'l.strategyfortoday's China

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As reported by the Russian General Staff, Afghan-USSR alliance began as
early as 1919 immdeiately after the October Revolution.  Yet almost a
century later, Afghan remained a poor, undeveloped, backward nation in
the same way left by British imperialsim.  How else to explain this
factual result besides soviet imperialism.  Soviet policy in Afghanistan
gave socialism a very bad name. The Soviet went into Afghanistan not to
help the Afghan people, but to played a geopolitical game and it lost
bring down with it the USSR that had already betrayed the revolution.


Below are the views of the Russian General Staff:

<>

Afghanistan has over 20 nationalities belonging to various language
groups. The Pushtun are the largest group, consisting of approximately
nine million people. The Tadjiks have over four million people, the
Uzbeks about one and a half million people, the Hazara about 1,400,000
people, and the Turkmens about 1,100,000 people.7 About 85 percent of
the population are peasants. No more than 600,000 people work in
industry. Spiritual leaders constitute a large group of the social
strata. The majority of the population is settled; however, some three
million people are nomads. The educational level of the country is very
low, with some 80 percent illiterate. The overwhelming part of the
population are Muslim, with 90 percent of these Sunni and 10 percent
Shia. The history of Afghanistan is one of resistance to various
conquerors, armed bands, and coups d'etat. It is interesting that
Alexander the Great, while conducting his conquest toward the east, took
five years to break the resistance of the Pushtun tribes.8 Ten centuries
later, Arab conquerors met the desperate resistance of the Afghan
tribes. Six times they launched an offensive against Kabul and the area
of the central plateau. Each time, they were forced to withdraw, having
suffered heavy casualties.

In February 1919, Emir Amanullah Khan decided to take advantage of the
results of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the civil war in
Russia. He declared Afghanistan's independence on 28 February. This
served as the cause for the Third Anglo-Afghan War (3 May to 3 July
1919) in which the 340,000-man British Army met the 40,000 Afghan
Army.12 At first, the British forces prevailed in the Battle for the
Khyber Pass. On a different axis, through Waziristan, advancing Afghan
forces were checked at the Thal fortress on 27 May. Simultaneously, the
Pushtun tribes along the border rose in revolt. This uprising reinforced
the independence movement in India. These uprisings forced London to
seek a truce, which they signed in Rawalpindi on 8 August 1919.
Preliminary peace talks continued, and the final peace treaty between
Great Britain and Afghanistan was signed in November 1921.

The victory of the Afghan people in this war and the Red Army's
destruction of British interventionists in the Caspian Sea region led to
a significant [international] step as the fledgling Russian Soviet
Republic recognized the sovereignty of Afghanistan on 27 March 1919. On
28 February 1921, the Soviet-Afghan Treaty of Friendship was signed in
Kabul. This was the first treaty that Afghanistan had signed with a
great power as an equal. On 24 June 1931, Afghanistan and the USSR
concluded an agreement on neutrality and mutual nonaggression. The term
of the treaty was for ten years and was renewable. It was renewed four
times, the last time being in December 1975.

The progressive reform of Afghanistan continued from 1919 through 1928.
In 1923, the government proclaimed the state's first constitution. This
constitution was not supported by the tribal leaders, clergy, and
peasants. This led to an uprising against the government at the end of
1928 and a military coup in October 1929. General Mohammad Nadir Shah,
the former Minister of War, was crowned king and established a new
ruling dynasty.13 His new constitution of 1931 reinforced and supported
the participation of the tribal aristocracy in government.



On 7 September 1939, after the beginning of the Second World War (1939
to 1945), the Afghan government announced its neutrality and maintained
this stance throughout the war. At the same time, the economic situation
in the country became progressively worse. This led to the growth of an
antigovernment mood, especially among the young and the embryonic
national bourgeoisie, which in turn led to the founding of various
opposition parties and groups. This led to a series of regime plots,
government negotiations, and the resulting plunge into the abyss of
civil war.14

In the mid 1960s, the progressive [communist] part of the officer corps
of the Armed Forces of Afghanistan clandestinely formed the Army
Revolutionary Organization with the goal of overthrowing the monarchy.
In July 1973, the army launched a coup d'etat that overthrew the
monarchy and established a republic. Mohammad Daoud headed the new
government, but he was unable to bring stability to the country. This
led to conspiracies by former high-placed officials, generals, and
officers. Their attempts failed and the organizers were executed. The
country and army were buried in an avalanche of persecution and
repression.15

In January 1965, the illegal Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA) was founded. It was headed by Nur Mohammad Taraki, and one of the
members of the central committee was Babrak Karmal. From the very first
day, there were serious differences between these two leaders that led
to Karmal's expulsion from the central committee. His place was taken by
Hafizullah Amin. As a result, the party was split into two factions,
both of which fought independently for their goals. However, Daoud's
opposition politics against both factions of the PDPA and also the
repression of PDPA members quickly led the factions to bury their
differences and reunite to fight the regime. On 27 April 1978, the PDPA
seized control of the country. The prime minister and head of state was
N. M. Taraki; his vice president was B. Karmal.

The reforms that Taraki undertook were not supported by members of the
government, the army, or the people.16 Waves of unrest rocked the new
administration and brought new leaders to the surface; one of the more
active was Hafizullah Amin. On 14 October 1979, there was a coup d'etat
and a usurpation of power. N. M. Taraki was brutally murdered by Amin's
supporters. A new wave of repression poured over the army and country.
However, this did not guarantee the viability of the new regime, which
was secretly opposed within the government and openly opposed by armed
opposition groups. Moreover, this armed opposition began to grow in
strength and spread throughout the country.

Originally, the Islamic fundamentalist movement provided the foundation
for the armed opposition. The Islamic fundamentalist movement arose in
the mid-1960s and promoted the rebirth of Islam, based on its original
principles and cleansed of its later developments. 17 In 1968,
supporters of the fundamentalists joined together in the Union of Muslim
Youth. This union's mission was to combat any member of the country's
ruling clique who pandered to the modernization of Islam or the
penetration of the country with communist ideas. The union established
their program and became a permanent resistance in irreconcilable
opposition to all the successive regimes that ruled Afghanistan for
short or long periods of time.

In June of 1975, the fundamentalists attempted to overthrow the regime
of M. Daoud. They started the insurgent movement in the Panjshir valley,
some 100 kilometers north of Kabul, and in a number of other provinces
of the country. However, the government forces easily smashed the
insurgency, and a sizable portion of the insurgents left the country and
settled in Pakistan, where they had complete freedom of action. In May
1978, the insurgents founded their first base in Pakistan to train armed
bands for combat in Afghanistan. Afterwards, similar centers were
founded in Iran and also in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The primary source
of manpower for these armed bands was the many Afghan refugees who, by
the fall of 1979, numbered several hundred thousand.18

Ethnic minorities also provided strong armed resistance groups that
wanted to seize some power and control from the majority Pashtun.
Through the efforts of the fundamentalist and ethnic groups, armed
insurrection flared in Nuristan in October 1978 and then in Herat in
March 1979. In April and May of 1979, the rebellion spread to Baglan,
Oruzgan, Farah, Badghis, Ghowr, Logar, and so on throughout the
provinces of Afghanistan. "Free Nuristan" was proclaimed in the spring
of 1979, and by August "Independent Islamic Hazarajat" with its
3,000-strong "Union of Islamic Warriors" sprang into being. The armed
insurrection against the central power and various nationalities began,
and, as a result, many regions of the country came under the complete
control of the Mujahideen. The Mujahideen established "Islamic
Committees" backed by their armed might to rule these areas. Reinforced
resistance groups went on the offensive and advanced on the cities of
Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad, and Khost. In the summer and fall, powerful
unrest shook the cities of Ghazni, Gardez, Asmar, and others. In June
through August, the Mujahideen repeatedly made attempts to seize Kabul,
its environs, and the capital airport.19 Civil war raged throughout the
country in 1978 and 1979. Neither of the opposing sides could attain a
quick victory over the other without significant help from the outside.
Under these circumstances, the ruling circles in Kabul looked to the
Soviet Union for help.



Soviet-Afghan military cooperation has a long history. As far back as
1919, the Soviet government gave Afghanistan gratuitous aid in the form
of a million gold rubles, small arms, ammunition, and a few aircraft to
support the Afghan resistance to the British conquerors.20 In 1924, the
USSR again gave military aid to Afghanistan. They gave them small arms
and aircraft and conducted training in Tashkent for cadre officers from
the Afghan Army. Soviet-Afghan military cooperation began on a regular
basis in 1956, when both countries signed another agreement. The Soviet
Minister of Defense was now responsible for training national military
cadres. In 1972, up to 100 Soviet consultants and technical specialists
were sent on detached duty to Afghanistan to train the Afghan armed
forces. In May 1978, the governments signed another international
agreement, sending up to 400 Soviet military advisers to Afghanistan.21

The DRA and Moscow signed a Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborliness,
and Cooperation in Moscow in December 1978. The treaty allowed the
government of Afghanistan to request that the government of the Soviet
Union send forces into Afghanistan and provided the legal basis for such
an action. The government of N. M. Taraki repeatedly requested the
introduction of Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the spring and summer of
1979. He requested Soviet troops to provide his security and to increase
the effectiveness of the fight against the Mujahideen. On 14 April the
Afghan government requested that the USSR send 15 to 20 helicopters with
their crews to Afghanistan, and on 16 June the Soviet government
responded and sent a detachment of tanks, BMPs, and crews to guard the
government of Afghanistan in Kabul and to secure the Bagram and Shindand
airfields.

In response to this request, an airborne battalion, commanded by
Lieutenant Colonel A. Lomakin, arrived at the Bagram airfield on 7 July.
They arrived without their combat gear disguised as technical
specialists. They were the personal bodyguard for Taraki. The
paratroopers were directly subordinated to the senior Soviet military
adviser and did not interfere in Afghan politics.22


http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/grasovintroduction.html

tony black wrote:

> ..It was also my understanding that the secular gov't of Afghanistan
> at the time invited the Soviets in a number of times and that, at
> first, the Russkies repeatedly refused to get involved....[I am, of
> course, willing to be corrected if wrong on this matter]
>
> Tony
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Maki" <alanmaki@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 12:23 PM
> Subject: Re: [A-List] A Chinese Marxism view: Problems
> ofint'l.strategyfortoday's China
>
>
> > What was the "imperialism" involved in Afghanistan?
> >
> > The Soviets neither exploited nor plundered resources. Nor did they
> > attempt to control the government.
> >
> > On the other hand, take a look at what the United States is after there!