Afghanistan

The Tankies' Tankies/ 3

All the elements of Karaoke Jack's politics, on Afghanistan and in general, are there. The article is written in the spirit of the New Worker's injunction of "No concessions! No Compromise" with the Polish working class. Jack Conrad wants full steam ahead in the subjugation of Afghanistan. In fact Amin called off the land reform in 1979 with the transparent face-saving lie that it had been accomplished already. Whether or not the invading Russians and their puppet Karmal could have won some popular support had they prosecuted the land reform, no one can know now. Perhaps not: the polarisation...

Bloodless

Tony Stark is a millionaire weapons designer who decides to ensure his weapons never fall into the wrong hands — but only after being captured by terrorists in Afghanistan using them! The fact that he does so by designing his most destructive weapon yet presents him with predictable problems by the end of the film. Nevertheless rest assured that he triumphs over adversity by killing a large number of anonymous swarthy bad guys in spectacular set pieces. Despite his fight against the Taliban there is surprisingly little politics in Iron Man. Terrorists function as generic evil doers with...

Afghanistan without politics?

Review of A Thousand Splendid Suns , a novel by Khaled Hosseini Dedicated to “the women of Afghanistan”, this book tells the tale of two women, Mariam and Laila, as they grow up in the thirty or so years of bloody wars and coups that have defined Afghanistan’s recent history. In sparse prose, the novel paints a picture of these women as victims of misogyny and war, being buffeted here and there by the working out of political forces which they care little for and cannot influence. Most striking, and to Hosseini’s great credit, is the way in which he portrays patriarchy, as the very real...

Sentenced to death for reading about women’s rights

A student in Afghanistan downloads a report on women’s rights from the internet; he is arrested and sentenced to death for blasphemy by an Islamic court. This happened not under the Taliban but in October last year, under the pro-Western regime of Hamid Karzai. Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, a 23 year old who was studying journalism at Balkh University in Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, downloaded a report from an Iranian website which stated that Islamists who claim the Koran justifies the oppression of women are distorting the teachings of Islam. When he circulated it to his fellow students...

Afghanistan, Marxism, And The Shape Of The 20th Century

In this study in depth, Sean Matgamna examines the political and social history of Afghanistan, especially in the last quarter of the Twentieth Century, and what the experience of Stalinism there, the 1978 Stalinist-Armed Forces Revolution and then the Russian invasion, tells us about Stalinism in history. Click here to read the article.

Defend Malalai Joya!

By Amina Saddiq AT 28, Malalai Joya is Afghanistan’s youngest member of parliament, one of only a handful of women MPs. And Joya is a consistent fighter for women and girls. She has taught literacy classes and ran an orphanage and health clinic. She has spoken out against the continuing dominance of the warlords, religious fanatics and drug traffickers in Afghanistan’s stitched up and botched together post-Taliban parliament. For this, for being a brave fighter for the oppressed, Joya has now been suspended by her “fellow MPs” from Parliament. Joya has also received many threats on her life...

Defend Malalai Joya!

By Sacha Ismail The warlords, medievalist religious fanatics and drug traffickers who dominate Afghanistan’s “parliament” don’t like Malalai Joya, of the country’s very few women MPs, one bit. Her exposure of their war crimes, her promotion of women and children’s rights and her advocacy of universal education have made her the victim of four assassination attempts, and she has to pay for her own 24-hour protection. Now they are trying to expel her from their midst. Joya, 28, is the country’s youngest member of parliament. As a 19-year old refugee from Pakistan, she taught literacy classes to...

The return of the Taliban

by Cathy Nugent On 10 July the government announced a further 850 troops for Afghanistan, bringing the UK total to around 4,500. UK troops have been increased gradually since the beginning of the year, as part of an plan which will see all troops, including US troops, under the control of NATO. The US were planning to withdraw some of their troops from Afghanistan before November’s Congressional elections. A “final offensive” on Taliban-controlled areas was to take place first. Operation Mountain Thrust has gone ahead, involving US, UK, Canadian and Afghan troops in northern Helmand and...

Against this barbarism, we fight for socialism

To use civilian planes, full of people, to attack buildings full of civilians, mostly ordinary workers, is a crime against humanity, whatever the supposed aims. What cause could the hijackers have been serving when they massacre thousands of workers in New York? Not "anti-imperialism" in any rational sense - whatever anyone may pretend or imagine - but only rage against the modern world. Only on the basis of a dehumanised, backward-looking world-view could they have planned and carried out such a massacre. Such people are enemies for the working class and the labour movement as much as the US...

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