Afghanistan already on brink of "catastrophe" 
Decades of imperialist meddling paves way for 
famine

By MC17 and MC206

September 18 -- As Pakistani officials demanded 
that the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan extradite 
Osama bin Laden or face "massive military action 
by the United States" as early as this weekend, 
food-aid workers spoke of a "huge catastrophe in 
the making" for the people of Afghanistan.(1) Food 
supplies are already scarce in Afghanistan. 
Malnutrition gives Afghanistan the highest child 
mortality rate in the world, according to Save the 
Children-USA.(2) Hunger can only increase as tens 
of thousands flee Amerikan attacks for refugee 
camps in Iran and Pakistan -- to say nothing of 
the effects of Amerikan bombing or ground invasion 
themselves.

Still, top Amerikan officials prattle on in their 
cartoonish way about bringing Osama bin Laden in 
"dead or alive" and "whipping" the Taliban --
unconcerned about the suffering this will inflict 
upon millions of ordinary Afghans. The Amerikan 
government is showing itself once again to be the 
real number one terrorist in the world, willing to 
use broad, blunt force against entire populations 
in order to get its way.

One million people died in the famine which 
followed Amerika's carpet-bombing of Cambodia 
during the Vietnam war. Half a million Iraqi 
children have died as a result of bombings and 
sanctions since the 1991 Gulf War. Tens of 
thousands of Afghans died in the proxy war between 
the Amerika and the social-imperialist Soviet 
Union -- and this imperialist meddling laid the 
basis for the imminent catastrophic famine.

Imperialist meddling: The '80s

The Soviet Union, forced into an imperialist 
foreign policy because of the crisis in its state-
capitalist economy, invaded Afghanistan in 
December of 1979 and installed a puppet 
government.

The united $tates funded Afghan guerrillas 
fighting this Soviet invasion throughout the '80s. 
The Reagan White House and Congress publicly 
claimed they did this to "support Afghan self-
determination," but policy makers admitted 
privately their chief aim was to "bleed the Soviet 
Union" in a Vietnam-style conflict.(3) Congress 
eventually provided $3 billion in covert aid to 
the guerrillas, more than all other CIA covert 
operations in the 1980s combined.(4)

Even though it had over 150,000 highly trained, 
well equipped soldiers in Afghanistan at the 
height of its involvement, the Soviet Union lost 
more then 10,000 troops by 1989, when the Afghan 
guerrillas forced them to withdraw. Amerikan war-
planners pay lip service to the tenacity of the 
Afghan fighters, but perhaps they -- and the 
Amerikan people who will have to pay for any 
invasion of Afghanistan with the blood of their 
sons and daughters -- should take the lesson of 
the Soviet defeat more to heart. In 1992, strapped 
for cash and facing upheaval at home, the Soviet 
Union stopped arms shipments to their "socialist" 
puppet, Najibullah.

Trotskyist groups like the Sparticist League 
supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The 
Sparts have nothing good to say about the Soviet 
Union when it was socialist, yet to this day they 
"Hail the Red Army in Afghanistan!" This reveals 
their inability to carry out concrete class 
analysis. No Red Army invades another country, 
rapes its wimmin and imposes military-feudalism.

Imperialist meddling: The '90s

After the withdrawal of the Soviet troops, the 
united $tates stopped funding the Afghan 
guerrillas. The u.$.-supported Islamic front 
disintegrated into competing factions.

Pakistan backed the Taliban. According to Selig 
Harrison, who worked with the CIA in the 1980s, 
"The Taliban are not just recruits from 
'madrassas' (Muslim theological schools) but are 
on the payroll of the ISI (Inter Services 
Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the 
Pakistani government). The CIA still has close 
links with the ISI." Harrison says that the ISI 
and CIA "actively encouraged" the creation of the 
Taliban.(5)

The Taliban invited Osama bin Laden, wealthy heir 
to a Saudi construction fortune, to Afghanistan in 
1996. With his aid and further assistance from 
Pakistan, the Taliban captured Kabul, 
Afghanistan's capital city. The Taliban now 
controls more than 90 percent of Afghanistan.(6)

Bin Laden had been on the CIA payroll in the 
1980s. He ran the group Maktab al-Khidamar (the 
MAK), which funneled money, guns and fighters to 
the guerrillas in Afghanistan. The Pakistani ISI, 
acting as a conduit for the CIA, supported the 
MAK. In 1998 bin Laden split from the MAK and 
formed al-Qaida, the organization the united 
$tates alleges is behind the 1998 bombings of 
Amerikan embassies in Africa and the recent 
attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.(7)

In 1998, the united $tates bombed Afghanistan for 
harboring bin Laden, despite the fact that the Taliban 
said it was willing to negotiate if the U.$. 
produced evidence that bin Laden was involved in 
the embassy bombings. The united $tates also 
bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan it said was 
producing poison gas for bin Laden. This claim has 
since been discredited.(11)

Pro-CIA pundits claim that the "shackles" placed 
on the agency -- such as a presidential order 
prohibiting assassination or policies against 
hiring "evil dudes" -- allowed the World Trade 
Center attack to happen. However: (i) The CIA has 
long been able to get around these paper 
restrictions. If Guy B hates Guy A, the CIA can 
give Guy B guns without having to say, "go kill 
Guy A." President Bill Clinton initiated efforts 
along these lines to "take out" Osama bin Laden in 
the late 90s. (ii) Former aggressive director of 
the CIA William Casey implemented such "active" 
policies -- and he failed to stop the bombing of 
the u.$. Marine Barracks in Lebanon, the bombing 
of a Berlin disco, the bombing of a Pan Am flight 
over Scotland, etc. etc. (iii) By 
opportunistically meddling in conflicts over 
political and economic control, by funding and 
training local "strongmen" -- almost invariably 
reactionaries of one stripe or another -- Amerika 
is simply laying the groundwork for future 
conflicts. In this light, it is reasonable to ask 
if the World Trade Center bombings were not 
"blowback" from earlier Amerikan policy.(10) And 
it is reasonable to ask if repeating such policies 
will not just create more such attacks, one, five, 
or ten years in the future.

The united $tates helped the Taliban come to power 
and hoped it could make the region safe for 
Amerikan business interests. President Bill 
Clinton even praised the Taliban for its efforts 
to crack down on poppy production.(1) However, as 
with u.$.-financed thugs like Saddam Hussein or 
Manuel Noriega, the united $tates dumped bin Laden 
and the Taliban once they no longer served 
Amerikan interests.

Desperate poverty

After so many years of being fought over by 
imperialist powers, the 25 million people of 
Afghanistan live in some of the worst conditions 
in the world. One of every four children dies 
before the age of 5; life expectancy is 43 years; 
infant and maternal death rates are the second 
highest in the world; and barely 30 percent of the 
men and 15 percent of the women can read or 
write.(6)

Access to safe drinking water in rural areas is 5% 
and in urban areas 39%. About 42% of all deaths in 
Afghanistan are due to diarrheal diseases; 85,000 
children younger than 5 years die annually from 
diarrheal diseases.(8)

Earlier this year -- before beating his chest and 
threatening death and destruction for all those 
who "aid terrorists" -- Colin Powell said, "If the 
international community does not take immediate 
action [to feed people in Afghanistan], countless 
deaths and terrible tragedy are certain to 
follow."(9) The Bush administration gave 
Afghanistan $43 million in "humanitarian aid" in 
May, including included $10 million for "other 
livelihood and food security programs." Don't 
mistake this for real concern, however. U.$. 
meddling created the current near-famine 
conditions, which make such food aid necessary --
food aid the united $tates uses as a bargaining 
chip to secure its economic and geo-political 
interests in the region.

The total U.$. aid to Afghanistan this year is 
$124.2 million, making the United States the 
largest Afghan donor for the second year in a 
row.(9)

Notes: 
1. Los Angeles Times, 17 Sep 2001 
2. IRIN-
CA Weekly Round-up 9, 1-7 June 2001 
3. See e.g. 
Bob Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 
1981-1987, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987 
4. http://institute-for-afghan-
studies.org/dev_xyz/foreign/us-
afghan/us_policy_0.htm#Congress
and Covert Aid 
5. The Times of India, March 7, 
2001 
6. Washington Post, 16 Sep 2001 
7. msnbc.com, 24 Aug 1998 
8. Journal of the American Medical 
Association, 5 Aug 1998 
9. Cnn.com, 17 May 2001 
10. Robert Scheer, "CIA's tracks lead in 
disastrous circle," LA Times, 17 Sep 01 
11. MIM Notes 170, 15 Sep 1998