Statement by Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment
Since the attacks on the Twin Towers in Manhattan in 2001, 38 million people have become refugees as a direct result of wars perpetrated by U.S. imperialism. Amongst them are more than six million Afghans — a number which is rapidly rising.
U.S. involvement in Afghanistan started long before the United States and its closest allies stormed into the country in 2001 and, in the name of “democracy,” launched the “war on terror.”
In the 1980s, the U.S. backed the mujahideen, an alliance of Islamic warlords, against an elected, communist Afghan government. During almost ten years, the CIA sent $3 billion dollars to the mujahideen, some of whose members went on to form the Taliban. Later the U.S. supported the Northern Alliance and eventually the Hamid Karzai regime, always with an eye to U.S. geopolitical interests and Afghan’s rich natural resources. Along the way it was joined by NATO forces who were every bit as brutal as the U.S.
The powerful forces of U.S. imperialism unleashed a 20-year period of massive carnage, while the armaments industry counted its profits. More than 120,000 Afghans have been killed — almost half of them civilians — and countless numbers injured. All the while, U.S., Australian and NATO forces committed war crimes with impunity.
When the occupying forces pulled out in September 2021, the puppet government collapsed and President Ashraf Ghani fled. The U.S., NATO and all of the regimes complicit in U.S. foreign policy are accountable for the crisis unfolding in Afghanistan today — a situation much worse than it was in 2001.
The reactionary Islamist Taliban is resurgent. The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is back, trying to reassert control over every aspect of girls’ and women’s lives. The price of essential goods is skyrocketing. Unemployment is high and famine threatens amid the political chaos and a severe drought.
U.S. interference in the region has not ended — it has just taken on a new form. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared an “over-the-horizon” military policy that amounts to a new chapter of American engagement with Afghanistan. The U.S. will keep using drone strikes against civilians and military targets if the current cast of gangsters — including the Taliban — step out of line with its imperialist goals in the region.
The Afghan people are desperate for peace after 20 years of war. They have no illusions about the Taliban being any less corrupt than the puppet regime which recently fled the country, but some hope there will be less constant deadly conflict, especially in rural areas. Others, however, are determined to fight for democratic rights and against the theocratic rule of the Taliban.
Protests broke out in early September, from Herat to Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif; women and young people were in the forefront. Despite Taliban terror, resistance to injustice is inevitable.
In January 2020, Left Radical of Afghanistan was among a group of socialists, workers, secularists, and women’s rights activists who launched a monthly, revolutionary publication called Eteraz or The Protest. The Protest was proudly distributed to university students, teachers, anti-occupation activists, people opposed to the regime of Ashraf Ghani, women activists and the anti-Taliban opposition in most of the country’s provinces.
Today the staff and writers of Eteraz and their families are in hiding. Despite being tracked down at home by the Taliban, they vow to continue to publish their magazine online.
The Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment calls on progressive forces around the world to back this resistance in Afghanistan by providing both material aid and political solidarity to the Left Radical of Afghanistan group. Give here:
CRIR demands:
–Imperialists out of Afghanistan and the region.
–War reparations for the Afghan people paid by the U.S. and NATO. No strings attached.
–Immediately open the borders of the U.S., Australia, and NATO nations, and those of every country capable of receiving refugees from war-torn Afghanistan.
–End murderous U.S. drone attacks.
–Open the schools to every girl in Afghanistan and allow women to work outside the home.
–Support the resistance of workers, youth, LGBTI+, progressives, women and radicals against the Taliban.
Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR)
Freedom Socialist Party – United States and Australia
Movimento Revolucionário Socialista – Brasil
Partido Socialismo y Libertad – Argentina
Partido Obrero Socialista – México
Contact: cririnter@gmail.com
