Afghanistan: US reaffirms its world leadership
The Taliban regime has been toppled. The followers of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden have been driven from power in most of Afghanistan. We were told that the battle between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban would be long and hard, in particular for Kabul. But the Taliban have retreated without a real confrontation, crushed under American bombing, and are now under threat in their last stronghold in the region of Kandahar.
Faced with the apparently unexpected rapidity of events, the foreign ministers of the member countries of the UN met urgently in New York on the 12 November to call for the slowing down of military action and the acceleration of political action. Conversely America increased its pressure for the speeding up of the military offensive. Instead of trumpeting their satisfaction at the defeat of one the principle centres of ‘international terrorism’, and faced with a situation of growing anarchy, the imperialist powers in the security council of the UN made a worried appeal to the Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban forces to “keep to their responsibilities concerning human rights” and to exercise power while “respecting people and assuring social peace”. We can only underline the sickening hypocrisy of these criminals giving lessons to the little gangsters and cliques that they supported for their own interests, when the great powers are the principle warmongers and their rivalries are directly responsible for the biggest massacres in history.
What the dramatic situation in Afghanistan shows once more is the free for all among the great powers. No consensus exists between them to eradicate international Islamic terrorism, which in any case is not the real game; nor are they interested in ‘humanitarianism’, which is only a pretext to settle their scores by bleeding populations white.
The pressure of American policy
The attack on the Twin Towers was the dreamt-for pretext for the US to apply a military policy already defined this summer by the secretary of defence Donald Rumsfield, i.e. pursuing its strategic priorities in Asia instead of Europe and the Mediterranean basin. In order to clearly affirm its authority in this part of the world, the United States has decided to crush the Taliban in Afghanistan by itself, with its own methods, only leaving a miniscule role to its best ally Britain, and excluding a country like France, which has been itching to take America’s hand in order to play its own pawns. Since September 11 Bush has constantly repeated that this war is going to be long, and that it’s not only against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The entire world is to become an ‘anti-terrorist’ hunting ground: “We have had a good beginning in Afghanistan, but much remains to be done (�) we will pursue them to the end” he declared a week after the taking of Kabul. Shortly after that he began growling menacingly towards Iraq, which many see as the next target, although a number of other candidates have been floated (Yemen, Somalia, etc).
The United States can boast today that it has won certain advantages. With the rapid victory of the ‘anti-Talibans’, it has for example silenced those European powers, headed by France, who criticised the validity of bombing and thus the whole of American strategy. By the same token it has gained a certain success with its own ‘public opinion’ by defeating the Taliban enemy with a policy of ‘zero deaths’. This has allowed Washington to better justify the dispatch of 3200 marines in addition to 500 special forces already on the spot, as well as a highly sophisticated and destructive military armada.
The imperialist free for all
However, everything is far from being a walkover for the White House. Contrary to the Gulf War where the US imposed its law on Saudi Arabia and brought to heel the western powers hostile to its intervention, the United States has clearly decided to act for itself. Looking at the different demonstrations of US force since the Gulf War, whether the spectacular defeat in Somalia in 1992, the attempt to bring American order to ex-Yugoslavia, or the massive war against Serbia in 1999 in the name of defending Kosovans, the US has been systematically opposed by their old allies of the western bloc. In such a context, in the breakthrough they have made in Afghanistan, the US policy is to ride alone. In order to block the pressure of its ‘allies’, the American government is presently supporting the Northern Alliance, until now supported more by Russia. At the same time Washington has deliberately not armed the more important but less dependable Pashtun factions closer to Pakistan.
Thus when Bush officially told the Northern Alliance on the 10 November not to enter Kabul, defence secretary Rumsfield at the same time told it to do as it wished, but “without committing exactions”. Faced with its rivals America throws oil on the fire of a chaotic situation.
The most eager bourgeoisie of all, the French, already eclipsed by the vote on the first resolution of the UN, has been able to justify its presence in Uzbekistan in the name of humanitarianism. It’s thus no accident that Paris has developed a whole press campaign on the danger of a relapse to the kind of anarchy we saw between 1992 and 1996, given the return to power of the Afghan warlords. Hubert Vedrine, French foreign minister, unblushingly addressed a threat to “those who are going to exercise power in Afghanistan”; henceforth they would be “under the vigilant gaze of the international community”. The French media, like the media in most of the western countries, who yesterday couldn’t find words bad enough to denounce the Taliban, has suddenly discovered their virtues since they at least established a state and a stable social situation. Another example of the vileness of the bourgeois class, whose truths vary according to its immediate interests.
The French army, presently isolated, rejected by the American pack leader, is thus impotent, back to square one, at the Uzbekistan border, whose head of state, supported by the United States, is dragging things out while waiting to draw profit from his part of the Afghan cake.
The consensus between the great powers is so uncertain that Great Britain itself, despite being in the first rank since the first day of the conflict, has decided “not to put its forces in place without the agreement of the United States and a clear understanding of what our troops will do in the framework of the military coalition”, and has stood down thousands of troops who were expected to be deployed. In fact, the British bourgeoisie, despite Blair’s declarations of allegiance, has been excluded by Bush from all the decisions taken about Afghanistan for the past two months (see the accompanying article in this issue).
The disappointment of France and Great Britain indicates the policy of the United States in this conflict: to elicit the ‘solidarity’ of its old cold war allies toward its own strategic vision, but to deprive them of any benefit that they might expect from this solidarity. Obviously the European powers who announced their support for operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ weren’t doing it to win Bush’s smile but because it was the only means of being there when the spoils were shared out. The little part of the cake that Blair or Chirac were hoping for was to deploy their troops on the spot. This would prevent the American godfather from enjoying the monopoly of military presence in this part of the world, which in turn would leave its hands entirely free to pursue its own exclusive interests. But Bush has apparently decided not to even grant them these crumbs. The only solidarity that the American gangster appreciates from his second strings is obedience.
Capitalism’s only perspective is chaos
The Bonn conference which began on 26 November between Europe and the different Afghan factions has the avowed aim of establishing a “multi-ethnic regime representing the diversity of the country”. In reality it is only an episode in the free for all now reigning in Afghanistan. But this conference is above all part of the wider free for all amongst the great powers who pretend to have a political solution for Afghanistan.
It is also significant that this conference is being held in Germany and not in Great Britain or in France who have been until now the most active in the military operation (even if modestly). By giving Germany the diplomatic prestige of organising this conference, the biggest power is trying to play its allies off against each other.
Not only is the Afghan powder-keg becoming one of the new zones of confrontation between the great powers, a major stake of the imperialist balance of forces in the period to come; it is also extending capitalist chaos further to the east. Afghanistan has always represented a key region between the Middle and Far East, and between three large countries, Russia, China and India, a region which has always been a stake between the eastern and western blocs during the cold war. Today the conflicts within Afghanistan are much more likely to spread to the neighbouring region. Thus the countries to the north, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, are trying to play off Russia and the United States. Pakistan’s rival factions, already wound up in the preceding period of American intervention, are going to tear into each other more than ever, while the loss of Islamabad’s Taliban ally will make it all the more vulnerable at the geo-strategic level. Meanwhile India is being caught between the pressure of the US and China, which has generously supplied its atomic capability to India’s arch-rival, Pakistan. The imperialist pretensions of India are thus pushing it to oppose the military presence of the US in a region where it wants to be one of the preponderant powers.
The future announced by the circling of all these vultures is sombre indeed. Once again they are going to sow death and chaos in the name of peace, humanity, and civilisation �in reality for the needs of a dying social system.
KW, 24 /11/01.
Comments
Terrorism
Communists like to condemn the brutality of American warfare due to the deaths of civilians. Yet I wonder if Communists could fight any clearer. Consider what would happen if a genuine (by your standards) Communist Revolution broke out tomorrow.
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As previous revolutions (the American, French and Russian as well as the Spanish Civil War) have shown, support for the revolution often varies by region. What happens when Communists close in on a region held by the opposition?
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In a city, there is the obvious question of civilians in the middle of a block also existing as the site of a firefight. Or a siege.
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In the countryside (typically a bastion of conservatism), there is the question of the populace hiding contras (counter-revolutionary guerrillas) and refusing to share food, intelligence, etc. without a brutal regime of terror. Also an attack on the house of a contra would also risk the life of any women and children through stray bullets or a fire.
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As much as Communists get indignant when the "bourgeoisie" dismisses civilian casualties as "collateral damage", I am sure that should a Communist revolution occur, the revolutionaries would be willing to inflict collateral damage of their own. There is a reason why Communist revolutions are accompanied by a Red Terror and why Lenin was inspired by the Terror of Robespierre. (Robespierre himself had to fight off Catholic guerrillas.)
Edit re:Terrorism
When I said, "Yet I wonder if Communists could fight any clearer" I meant to say "cleaner" rather "clearer".
Internationalism v terrorism
Hidden Author's comments raise the question of why should revolutionary class violence by the working class not be as brutal as any other sort of war in the current period. Two comments.
First, for all the brutality that has existed in human history of class societies, the use of industrial scale killing of civilians as a weapon of war (and latterly of terrorism) is an invention of the 20th Century, of capitalism's decadence.
Secondly, and most importantly, is the question of what a communist revolution aims to create, a world human community. In the Russian Revolution it was clear that it would stand or fall according to the success or failure of revolution in other countries, particularly Germany. That was the position of revolutionaries at the time. Although it was necessary to fight against the invading White armies - a conventional sort of war - the civilians of the invading countries, including the working class, are therefore the potential and future allies of the revolution. Slaughtering them is suicidal. Even the vast majority of soldiers are simply workers in uniform, often economic if not official conscripts.
And don't forget the ICC rejects Red Terror, having drawn the negative lessons of Kronstadt.
I'm not so interested in
I'm not so interested in what you seek to achieve as much as I am in how you seek to achieve it.
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How do you seize a well-fortified city without shelling it with artillery? How do you kill your enemy in urban conflict without posing the risk of stray bullets?
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How do you attack a house of an enemy without endangering the women and children inside?
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How did the Left Communists propose to defend themselves and their revolution without using the Red Terror to intimidate the insurgents of the opposition?
The relation between what and how
Hidden Author seems to be making a big difference between our aim - communism, and the means to achieve it. But how can you separate them?
You cannot export revolution by war, it has to spread by the struggle of the working class.
In the Russian revolution winning the war against the Whites was necessary - and winning a war against an invader is enough to save a capitalist state - but it could not save the revolution which depends on class consciousness. The defeat of the Russian revolution was marked by the betrayal expressed in the idea of 'socialism in one country'. And that defeat inevitably led to the terror of stalinism.
The Whites
You argue as if the Whites were foreign invaders rather than an indigenous force brought into being by grievances against the Bolsheviks. The Whites included not only monarchists but also liberals and even rival socialist parties. It is ironic that the Bolsheviks to this day describe the defeat of the Whites as the defeat of foreign invaders. In fact the reason why the Whites included even socialists in their coalition was because the Treaty of Brest-Livotsk brought ordinary citizens under the jurisdiction of German, Austrian and Ottoman imperialism, outraging even many Russian socialists. Not to mention confiscations of grain, campaigns against "kulaks" and supression of dissidents, all of whom merged with the betrayal of Brest-Livotsk to form a powerful wave of anti-bolshevism that only a brutal civil war could defeat.
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With their self-righteousness, what would keep the same thing from happening in the next Bolshevik Revolution?
> The Whites included not
> The Whites included not only monarchists but also liberals and even rival socialist parties.
Proper usage of the term "White" should restrict to the military officers. There were Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries who attempted to join forces with the Whites against the Reds, but they were never welcomed as allies and the White military officers cast them as "Bolsheviks" in the same way that Republicans speak of "Communist Clinton!" The Whites lost precisely because they totally rejected the anti-Bolshevik Left. Kornilov had announced in early 1918 well before the later Red Terror began that cleansing Russia could require shedding the blodd of three-fourths of all Russians. That was not some kind of grievance with Bolshevism per se, it was just the Right-wing fanaticism of the Whites which had a life of its own and was hostile to the whole Left, whether Bolshevik or not. The Constitutional Democrats threw their support behind a military dictatorship and never exerted any noteworthy liberal influence. Not that it would have mattered much if they had tried, since they had very little popular support. The Mensheviks and SRs were the only parties capable of competing politically against the Bolsheviks. But the Whites never understood that fact.
The diverse opposition to Bolshevism
Well Anonymous, upon further research I can say that you're right. The opposition to Bolshevism included not only the Whites but the Greens as well. The Greens were peasant revolts against the Marxist-Leninist tyranny and included the Blues (the Tambov rebellion) and the Blacks (anarchists). Interestingly enough, the Left-Communists within the Bolshevik party supported the suppression of these rebellions even as they criticized Lenin.
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I guess when Bolsheviks criticize democracy as a bourgeoisie institution, they really mean it. With that kind of attitude, it would take a brutal war to impose Bolshevik rule on countries like America. And yet Bolsheviks have the gall to criticize the bourgeoisie for...brutal wars!
> The Greens were peasant
> The Greens were peasant revolts against the Marxist-Leninist tyranny
The Greens are more accurately described as a general rural rebellion against the urban cities, similar to the Khmer Rouge. The Greens were not merely fighting against Marxist-Leninists. A major reason for the defeat of the Whites was that they managed to alienate the peasants faster than the Bolsheviks did. There was a rebellion in Tambov and when it occurred some White officers attempted to join it. The Greens dealt with the White officers who sought to join their army the same way that Pol Pot dealt with many similar urbanites after 1975. Of course, if you read about how Ataman Semyonov alone by himself massacred about 100,000 thousand peasants just in the area of Siberia, you can say that some of this was understandable. The Whites were regarded as an enemy with good reason. But the Green hostility towards urbanites went beyond just that.
The difference
The Khmer Rouge were aggressors who sought to ram tyranny onto decent citizens. By contrast, the Greens were self-defense forces that saved peasants from death by starvation at the hands of Reds and Whites.
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My point isn't to defend the Whites or even the Greens. My point is this: If Bolshevism provokes such diverse opposition, then Bolshevik revolutions are inherently brutal wars. If Bolshevik revolutions are inherently brutal wars, then Bolsheviks have no business criticizing the bourgeoisie for causing brutal wars! That is my thesis and I would appreciate it if everyone here would focus on that rather than split hairs concerning the history of Russia!
Go here
http://markhumphrys.com/soviet.html
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Forget the neo-conservative/libertarian bias. Go to the websites it links to. Then go over the sources cited by those websites.
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As Mark Humphrys says, "It is true that the anti-communist resistance came in many forms, from liberal democrats to socialist anarchists to Jew-hating nationalists. The latter carried out hundreds of pogroms of Jews. In some areas, the Russian civil war was a conflict between communism and democracy. In other areas, it was a conflict between communism and fascism. But no crimes by (some of) their enemies can justify the crimes of Lenin and Trotsky."
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Even under the influence of socialism, Russians opposed the Bolshevik bloodsuckers. How much more do you think Americans and Europeans would resist such creatures?
> If Bolshevism provokes
> If Bolshevism provokes such diverse opposition
It would be more accurate to say that the disintegration of Czarist Russia caused a melange of political groups of differing types to appear which were all at war with each other. That was not something in response to Bolshevism. Kolchak's declaration in early 1918 about "even if we must shed the blood of three-fourths of all Russians" (see W. Bruce Lincoln, RED VICTORY, for more details) was not at all in response to Bolshevism. It was his own conception of what a purification of Russia would likely entail. All of the other fighting parties similarly had their own independent aims and were not merely provoked by Bolshevism when carrying on violence. The Bolsheviks would of course maintain that their own violence was "provoked" by other reactionary parties. Everyone had some rationale.
> The Khmer Rouge were
> The Khmer Rouge were aggressors who sought
It was only the US bombing of Cambodia which brought Pol Pot to ascendency within the party. Before 1969, when the bombing was begun, the policy adhered to by the central committee of the Kampuchean Communist Party was that they were to abstain from attempting revolution in Cambodia while giving support to Vietnam. Their own brand of Marxist analysis taught them that such a peasant country as Cambodia wasn't ripe for "proletarian revolution" and therefore it would make more sense to support a Vietnamese victory and then seek economic ties between Cambodia and a developing Vietnam. That policy was discredited by the Nixon-Kissinger bombing and in 1972 a new faction came to power under Pol Pot which called for leading an active peasant revolt to capture the cities.
> The latter carried out
> The latter carried out hundreds of pogroms of Jews.
while this is true, emphasizing that alone grossly underplays the white Terror. Probably about 150,000 Jews were killed in pogroms. But Ataman Semyonov was perfectly friendly with Jews and he massacred at least 100,000 Russian peasants. with others such as Baron Ungern-Sternberg and the rest of the White forces one could easily tie the estimate which Leggett, THE CHEKA, makes of about 140,000 executions by the Bolsheviks, without having to bring up anything about pogroms. The pogroms can be added in by anyone who isn't satisfied with simply letting the White Terror count match the Red Terror count. But whatever else it involved, Russia's civil war was certainly no more of a war between "communism and democracy" than it was a war between "fascism and democracy" (as opposed to "communism and fascism," which was also part of the picture too). It was a very complex civil war, as may be expected.
You have a point but...
It is certainly true that the collapse of the monarchy played as big a role in the diversity of the various factions as the activity of the Bolsheviks. But since revolution generally involves the collapse of the incumbent government, the Russian Revolution is still a good precedent for those who want to know what a Bolshevik takeover would do to their country.