Afghanistan: 30 years ago today

[Deckard]

Catching up on an old John Pilger book last night that I'd been meaning to read for a while (The New Rulers of the World, updated 2003), and this caught my eye, given the date and given what we were discussing not too long ago about women's rights in Afghanistan.

"On July 3, 1979, unknown to the American public and Congress, President Carter authorised a $500 million covert action programme in support of the tribal groups known as the mujaheddin. The aim was the overthrow of Afghanistan’s first secular, progressive government."

Which, of course, turns out to be 30 years ago today. Which, to my mind, and in light of the current major operation in Afghanistan, makes it ripe for reflection. It's no surprise to most of us here that the US/UK supported the mujaheddin (though in my experience, a surprising number seems unaware of even that). But the devil is in the detail.

How different things could have been.

The background:

In the sixties, a liberation movement arose in Afghanistan, centred on the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which opposed the autocratic rule of King Zahir Shar and eventually overthrew the regime of the king’s cousin, Mohammad Daud, in 1978. It was, by all accounts, an immensely popular revolution. Most foreign journalists in Kabul, reported the New York Times, found that ‘nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup’ The Wall Street Journal reported that ‘150,000 persons… marched to honour the new flag... the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.’ The Washington Post said that ‘Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned.’

The new government outlined a reform programme that included the abolition of feudal power in the countryside, freedom of religion, equal rights for women and the granting of hitherto denied rights to the various ethnic minorities. More than 13,000 prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

Under tribalism and feudalism, life expectancy was thirty-five and almost one in three children died in infancy. Ninety per cent of the population was illiterate. The new government introduced free medical care in the poorest areas. Peonage was abolished; a mass literacy campaign was begun. For women, the gains were unheard of; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40 per cent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 per cent of its teachers and 30 per cent of its civil servants.

Indeed, so radical were the changes that they remain vivid in the memories of those who benefited. Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who escaped the Taliban in September 2001, said, ‘Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked... We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian films on a Friday and listen to the latest Hindi music... It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools… We were terrified. It was funny and sad to think these were people the West had supported.’

The 'problem':

The problem with the PDPA government was that it was supported by the Soviet Union. Although Stalinist in its central committee structure, it was never the ‘puppet’ derided in the West, nor was its coup ‘Soviet-backed’, as western propaganda claimed at the time. In his memoirs, Cyrus Vance, President Carter’s Secretary of State, admitted, ‘We have no evidence of any Soviet complicity in the coup.” On the other wing of the Carter administration was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, who believed that the recent American humiliation in Vietnam required atonement, and that the gains of post-colonial liberation movements elsewhere presented a challenge to the United States. Moreover, the Anglo-American client regimes in the Middle East and the Gulf, notably Iran under the Shah, had to be ‘protected’. Were Afghanistan to succeed under the PDPA, it would offer the ‘threat of a promising example’.

The solution:

On July 3, 1979, unknown to the American public and Congress, President Carter authorised a $500 million covert action programme in support of the tribal groups known as the mujaheddin. The aim was the overthrow of Afghanistan’s first secular, progressive government. Contrary to cold war mythology, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which did not happen until six months later, had nothing to do with it. Indeed, all the evidence is that the Soviets made their fatal move into Afghanistan in response to the very tribal and religious ‘terrorism’ that the Americans used to justify their invasion in November 2001.

In an interview in 1998, Brzezinski admitted that Washington had lied about the American role. ‘According to the official version of history,’ he said, ‘CIA aid to the mujaheddin began during 1980, that is, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan... But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." In August 1979, the US embassy in Kabul reported that ‘the United States’ larger interests… would be served by the demise of [PDPA government], despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.’

(sources available in book's end notes)

And here we all are today.

What hope is there when the vast majority of the population of our countries is unaware of the above? And even if told, would just dismiss it as left wing? Are facts not facts? Are some things not beyond the false categorisation of left/right wing?

Why is anything that doesn't present our side's history as wholesome and heroic deemed 'left' wing anyway? As if left and right are equidistant from the truth. As if fact and fiction are just "equally valid points of view" (even though fiction still dominates).

I wonder sometimes if, in our keenness to treat left and right as equally valid but simply different points of view, in the concern among organisations like the BBC to appear truly impartial, we've lost sight of the truth.

[Strangelet]

wow that is insane. I had no clue. Deckard, who specifically in the carter administration was spearheading this? I find it hard to believe Brzezinski was the real firebrand behind this.

[Sean]

Well isn't that just fantastic.

[BeautifulBurnout]

Deckard

Even when we are aware, even when 2 million British people take to the streets on the same day to protest against something, the government just thumbs its nose at us.

This really is an insight - I knew that the West has been using Afghanistan as a pawn for centuries, but I had no idea about this particularly nasty bit of our global responsibility.

Ugh.

Edit: BTW Decks, I have nicked this for posting on CiF

[Deckard]

Re-reading my comments, I got a bit caught up in anger about the whole left-right labelling. The reason this matters to me though is because the only way we can ever justify past 'embarrassments' like these is by convincing ourselves that either (a) this is just one view of the truth, and it can be counteracted by the official version that will make us sleep easy at night again, or (b) our leaders 'made mistakes' but would definitely act differently now.

I'm not convinced it can, or we would.

One thing that is clear: wait long enough, and the most cynical, underhand actions - crimes even - will provoke barely a whimper of outrage among the populace. Time is not just the great healer, it's the great eraser.

Brzezinski's plan was to create an international movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and 'destabilise' the Soviet Union, creating, as he wrote in his autobiography, a 'few stirred-up Muslims'.

A few stirred-up Muslims.

Funnily enough, I think what angers me most isn't the ruthless decisions taken by those playing side against side. It's us, the public. The fortunate, well-fed, generally well-off public. In particular, the sentiment often heard in countries like ours that Muslims only ever have themselves to blame. That comforting post-colonial thing some tell themselves that Muslims must somehow be intrinsically incapable of peace, that they're "even fighting amongst themselves for godssakes!" and just the general snobbery that swishes around about "the natives". I can handle and accept the ignorance, but the sneering and spite and certainty that accompanies it just makes me sick.

Does anyone honestly believe things have changed? That we are more ethical now?

Our (now-deceased) former foreign secretary of the Blair era made a big thing about introducing an 'ethical dimension' to UK foreign policy over a decade ago. Yet we were still arming Suharto's Indonesia to the hilt that same year. In fact we were their biggest arms supplier, with the Blair government approving eleven arms deals with them, all under the Official Secrets Act (obviously such was the UK's 'ethicalness'. )

And it's clear things haven't changed in the UK, with my former employer's deals with Saudi Arabia being hushed up by ministers.

But can we believe in the intentions of Barack Obama?

(Does it even matter if we can? I constantly come back to the question, how far is the PoTUS really in charge of the long term direction?)

Or are figures at that level privy to certain truths about the way the world works - has to work - that the rest of us are simply too incapable of appreciating? Tough decisions, greater good, dog-eat-dog, and all that?

(Yep, I'm having another of those 'don't know what to believe' moments!)

I just find it hard to believe that Afghan women - and Muslims generally - should have to suffer because the slate has been wiped clean of our historical involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon..... and that there really is no other way of looking after our own countries' interests.

[Deckard]

Row over Afghan wife-starving law

An Afghan bill allowing a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex has been published in the official gazette and become law.

The original version obliged Shia women to have sex with their husbands every four days at a minimum, and it effectively condoned rape by removing the need for consent to sex within marriage.

Western leaders and Afghan women's groups were united in condemning an apparent reversal of key freedoms won by women after the fall of the Taliban.

Now an amended version of the same bill has passed quietly into law with the apparent approval of President Karzai.
-

But it appears to be a 'political' move by Karzai, so that's ok.