Reframing the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a Class War

April 28, 2009 in the briar-wire by Andrew Angus | 1 comment

By Michael Skinner
The Bullet (Socialist Project)
April 25, 2009

The fact that the Taliban is a party of the peasant classes, but certainly not the only one, is not news in Afghanistan or Pakistan. It is thus interesting that The New York Times (“Taliban Exploit Class Rifts to Gain Ground in Pakistan,” 16 April 2009) is now exploiting the fact the Taliban do represent significant groups of peasants as if this is news. This indication of a possible reframing of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a class war is significant as the U.S. escalates the intensity and scale of warfare in the region.

My Afghan-Canadian research partner, Hamayon Rastgar, has said many times since we returned from a research trip in Afghanistan that “the West gives the monopoly of anti-imperialism to the Taliban” by crushing and continuing to suppress socialist forces in Afghanistan and by portraying the complex insurgency in the simplistic way Western governments and media do.

Many non-violent resisters as well as various insurgent groups oppose the Taliban, the mujaheddin, and imperialist forces. The complexity of the resistance and insurgent forces remain opaque to most Western analysts. Articles by Afghan intellectuals engaged in non-violent resistance against all the forces of repression – the Taliban, the mujaheddin, and the Western forces – are rarely translated for Western readers. Westerners believe all insurgents are under a Taliban banner. However, as an Afghan Maoist leader told us: “The government credits the Taliban for every insurgent attack; the Taliban like to take the credit; and that works for everyone else at this moment.”

Operation Enduring Freedom and the Afghanistan State

It is important to recall that the militaries of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), from the U.S., Britain, Canada, and Australia, set the stage to institute a supposedly ‘democratic’ state in Afghanistan. However, this state is a reconstitution of the theocratic Islamic Republic of Afghanistan originally instituted in 1992. The Islamic Republic was instituted by one of several competing mujaheddin factions who were built up as part of the U.S.’s anti-socialist “freedom fighters.” The later rise of the Talban, facilitated as it was by the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA, the ISI, was in good part a response to the horrors inflicted on Afghans by conflicts between the rival mujaheddin factions after 1992. Several of these factions retreated to the north, in 1996, fleeing from the advance of Taliban military forces. These mujaheddin factions formed the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, which the Western news media sanitised with the title Northern Alliance.

In an article in Briarpatch (March/April 2008) regarding the use and abuse of feminism to sell Canada’s war in Afghanistan, I wrote: “The Taliban are radical Islamists intent on isolating Afghans from the world; the mujaheddin are radical Islamists intent on profiting from their relationship to the U.S. and now Canada. The Taliban are reprehensible, but the mujaheddin are hardly different; both created misogynistic regimes based on erroneous interpretations of Islam.”

The Taliban and mujaheddin also share a hatred of ‘Godless’ socialists. It is still illegal, based on religious grounds, as it has been since 1992, to form a socialist party in the elected theocracy of Afghanistan. Freedom of religion is supposedly guaranteed by the new Afghanistan constitution. But in practice the state acts in a way that all Afghans are considered Muslim by default. This misses the incredible cultural diversity in Afghanistan, and the many religions including several unique indigenous ones, that Afghans practice. Moreover, socialists (which include an important organized Maoist component) are not likely to have suddenly found salvation in Islam. There is, it seems, no Islamic equivalent of Latin American liberation theology or Canadian Christian socialism in Afghanistan.

The kicker is that in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan apostasy is punishable by death. Any Afghan socialist could be ‘legally’ executed on the grounds she or he has converted from Islam. Moreover, the Afghan Supreme Court ruled socialists are legally atheists to ban socialist parties from electoral politics.

Despite this suppression, Afghan Maoists claim they have consolidated disparate Maoist and socialist organisations into a new party. The Maoists also claim they will eventually beat the Taliban in a competition for the hearts and minds of peasants, once the insurgency has exhausted the OEF-NATO occupation, which even Afghan liberals consider as an imperialist occupation.

Even Michael Ignatieff (2003), in his book Empire Lite, which is a collection of his New York Times essays, explicitly identifies the occupation of Afghanistan as imperialist. Ignatieff just happens to think this imperialist occupation is “humanitarian,” because, he argues, imposing a liberal world order in Central Asia is preferable to allowing people he claims are “barbarians” the autonomy to govern their own affairs. The fact that the hierarchical priorities of this liberal world order rank the accumulation of state power and individual wealth far above observation of international laws and human rights is, for Ignatieff, an inconvenient but unavoidable truth. Ignatieff’s complaint is that this empire needs to throw its weight around more forcefully to establish liberal world order – an argument the Obama administration seems to be implementing.

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  1. M.AKRAM KHAN NIAZI’s avatar

    M.AKRAM KHAN NIAZI on September 19, 2009 at 5:00 am

    Union of Afgahnistan and Pakistan

    By M. Akram Khan, Balida Town, Karachi, Pakistan, 19 September 2009

    The only solution to the present problem of instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan is in the Union of these two countries based on principles of Democracy and Federalism.

    In history, Durani Empire was composed of all the areas in which today’s Pakistan and Afghanistan are located, and during the Mughal Empire together they were a single country. In the initial period of the British Empire, they were also the same country.

    Later, some forces that had vested interests kept a distance between these lands. Consequently, border areas between these two countries became hiding places for criminals of both countries, thieves of automobiles and other stolen goods. They are stored in this region. This large uncontrollable area is a base for many evils.

    Here narcotics are grown; addiction is destroying the youth and humanity. Because the region is not developed and poverty is rampant, people are attracted to extremism and militancy.

    Union of both countries will make the single government more responsible in stabilizing this region and in satisfying the nationalistic pride of its inhabitants. People will be able to serve humanity as other large nations of the world do. Otherwise, this region will always remain a nuisance for the world. It destroyed Soviet Union. It may also take down the western world, which will be a great blow to the development of Science and Technology, especially Medical science.
    Advantages to the world:
    Control of terrorism:
    Instability in this region is causing great damage to humanity. Soldiers of many countries are sacrificing their lives just to eliminate terrorists from these countries. In the presence of a unified government, it will be easier to control terrorists.
    Control of extremism:
    As a unified nation composed of multiethnic groups such as the Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, Pashtuns, Urdu speakers, Tajiks, Persians and Hazaras, and as a multisectarian society such as Sunni and Shiites, it will become impossible for any ethnic group or religious sect to find any future in extremism.
    Stabilization of the region:
    Although it is now that the problems of this region have gained attention, it has suffered from instability for a long time. People here are finding no hope, no future for themselves, partly because of interference from foreign countries, such as the British Empire, Soviet Union, USA, China and India. When they were unified under the Durani Empire, the region was stable. The same was the case during the Mughal Empire.
    There are three main groups in Asia, i.e. the Chinese, Hindus and Muslims. Chinese and Hindus are satisfied with their states of China and India. The Muslim population in Asia is greater than the Chinese and Hindus combined. However, having no comparable state of their own they experience the stress of inferiority. That element too is causing instability and irritation amongst common Muslims. By creating a unified state of Pakistan and Afghanistan, a sense of satisfaction, pride and respect of having a national state will be achieved. That might lead to normalization of relations with the rest of the world and stability.
    Solution to economic problems
    At present, both countries are burdens on others, and pose barriers in exploring the resources of Central Asia by the world. After stabilization, it will be useful not only for Central Asia and for the World, but also for the new unified nation itself.
    Advantages to Pakistan:
    It was the vision of Quaid-e-Azam, the Founder of Pakistan, to unify the regions of West Pakistan, Afghanistan, East Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. That probably needs time. It took many centuries for Europeans to realize that they shared a common goal.
    • By unification with Afghanistan, areas, which are included in Pakistan, will stabilize, and migration of people from disturbed areas will stop.
    • Smuggling of weapons across the borders will end, and Law and Order will be established.
    • Similarly, illicit drug trade will be minimized.
    • Whole areas of Pukhtoons (Pashtuns) speaking population will unify, and that will help the development of culture and language of that group which is now divided in two nations.
    • Expenses for Security measures on the borders will be minimal. The resultant balance can be used for the welfare of people.
    • Interference of other nations in this region will subside.
    • Due to unique historical importance for Buddhists and Hindus, tourism industry will flourish and business activity in the region will increase.
    Advantages to Afghanistan:
    • Through unification, Afghanistan will cease to be a land locked country. The union will promote freedom of people of Afghanistan to travel and engage in economic activity,
    • Extremism and terrorism will come to and end, as the people will become more engaged and involved in adjusting themselves in the new union. Utilization of raw products of Afghanistan will increase.
    • Security and military expenses will minimize.
    • Doors to Pakistan will open to Afghanis who look for jobs in Pakistan.
    • Shortage of food products in Afghanistan will decrease and it will increase the utilization of raw products of Afghanistan.
    • Linking Central Asia via Afghanistan to the rest of the world will generate extraordinary development.
    Based on above observations, suggestions and predictions, it is clear that unification of Pakistan and Afghanistan will be fruitful for everyone in the region and for the world at large.
    Mr. M. Akram Khan Niazi can be reached at akrumniazi@hotmail.com

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