THE MYTH OF NATION BUILDING:

Afghanistan’s fate after the Taliban and challenges for the Left

“All I want is a happy Afghanistan” – King Zahir Shah, Rome, 2001.

Some facts about the “happy” Afghanistan of King Zahir Shah –

Infant mortality, 25 %. Life expectancy, 40. Literacy, 7 %. Number of highways, extremely limited. Railways, nil. Categorized as “peasant masses” (landless) 92 %. Banking system, usurious money lending. And, if statistics from two or three cities are excluded, the rights of women and children rested solely in the authoritarian whims of either tribal chiefs or local mullahs, often both.

That was the land of milk and honey King Zahir Shah left behind in 1973.

Prior to that, in 1972, the CIA’s favorite Islamic fundamentalist, Golbuddin Kekmatyar, murdered a prominent secular student leader (Saydal Sokhandan) on the Kabul University campus. And, by the time the King left Afghanistan, Islamic radicals had made it a habit to throw acid in the face of female high school and university students. Also, unknown the outside world, the Shah of Iran’s dreaded secret police (SAVAK), already engaged in the brutal obliteration of Left wing activists in Teheran, was busy ensuring that similar trends in Afghanistan were eliminated efficiently and ruthlessly.

Now, nearly 30 years into the future, Afghanistan is being condemned to another version of Zahir Shah’s happy Afghanistan.

The West appears enamoured by the Loya Jirgha which, far from being the local version of the modern day legislative assembly, was simply a collection of tribal and religious leaders who were quite willing to let the King play the “big game” as long as their own financial interests in the provinces were not threatened in any manner whatsoever. Alternately, if a Zahir Shah-led Loya Jirgha is not convened in the near term future, Afghans will find their future in the rather dubious hands of a “representative” government dominated by key figures from within the Northern Alliance (United Front) on one hand and some of the CIA’s favorite Pusthun warlords on the other.

Either way, the majority of Afghans will remain impoverished. The only solution is to bring into focus the economic agenda developed by progressive groups of Afghan students in the late 1970s, an agenda which essentially influenced the US, Iran and Pakistan to determine that direct intervention in Afghanistan, to stem the tide of change, was imperative; their convenient alliance with Islamic radicals within Afghanistan was cemented well before the Soviet invasion, a fact which has been deliberately hidden by a rather effective propaganda machine.

There is no established tradition of socialist or Marxist ideology and, for all practical purposes, the progressive agenda of the Afghan Left was entirely home grown: land reforms, separation of religion and state, legalization of trade unions for workers and peasants, eradication if illiteracy and emancipation of women. Effectively, the agenda laid out the fundamental concepts designed to create a democratic “nation state”; thus far, despite the availability of certain liberties in selected Afghan cities, Zahir Shah’s system of governance was dedicated to maintaining neutrality in the power politics being played over centuries around Afghanistan’s loosely defined borders.

In fact, the basic ingredients for conflict within Afghan society, ingredients pitting progressive ideals against fundamentalist Islam were totally independent of any Soviet present; the debate between genuine reforms and feudalism was raging soon after 1966. Tribal chiefs and village clergymen were already on the alert and instances of “terrorism” against Afghan intellectuals and activists were rising with each passing day.

Afghanistan’s Left was largely unprepared to exploit a historic opportunity in the late 1960s.

Firstly, the revolutionary movement within the country was split shortly after its birth, a reflection of the divisions within international communism. Secondly, none of the progressive parties were able to establish any credible support bases in Afghanistan’s provinces and, in that context, the Left was hardly battle ready. Finally, given the CIA’s Cold War strategy of pitting Islamic fundamentalists against socialist movements in virtually all Muslim countries, the Left was unable to visualize the sheer strength and vigor of a broad opposition to any enduring changes in Afghanistan’s political order.

Furthermore, the alliance against Afghanistan’s Left was cemented when Afghanistan’s “Communist” government (1978) began to implement a long list of internal laws (beginning with laws relating to land reforms) without laying the foundations for their rapid acceptance by the very people whom such reforms were intended to emancipate; consequently, while the message of the warlords and mullahs – “Islam is under threat” – was widely disseminated, the actions of the Taraki government were widely perceived as “godless” steps against religion and the term “jihad”, resonating loudly within the Muslim world, received a sympathetic ear in most Western capitals.

Today, with the Cold War era conclusively brought to an end during an extended Texas cookout (the Putin-Bush summit) and with Leftist movements in the Muslim world largely in disarray, the West finds itself confronting the same Islamic fundamentalists which it fervently backed just a decade ago. An overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslims now find that though the war against communism is over, their own financial conditions continue to deteriorate; therein lies the appeal of Al-Qaeda’s message. The problem for the West in general, and the US in particular, is that whereas socialist and Marxist ideologies are, by their very nature, anti-terrorist, Islamic fundamentalism is devoid of any humanist traditions which respect the distinction between combatants and non combatants in any conflict.

In Afghanistan, the Left is now being presented with another significant opportunity since the message of Afghanistan’s revolutionary movement is simple, direct and telling: without land reforms, without the expansion of the public sector, without legislating women’s rights into an Afghan constitution, without the creation of a judiciary (and related executive branches) which can enforce new laws and without the segregation – in certain key respects – of religion and state at the village level, “broad based” and “representative” governments are merely illusions serving only to pacify the conscience of liberals in the West.

It is vital that a process of unity of the Afghan Left is undertaken in order to avoid the polemics and personal rivalries of the last four decades. There is also the renewed requirement for the Left to encourage debate from within since one of history’s primary lessons is most certainly that a progressive movement which does not incorporate the right to dissent is unequivocally destined to become authoritarian and revisionist.

The revolutionary message must incorporate the weight and substance necessary to make a decisive impact on Afghanistan’s future. Otherwise, the myths of freedom (e.g. the BBC’s John Simpson declaring Kabul’s liberation and CNN’s Christian Amanpour confirming the liberation of Kabul’s women) are likely to replace the fact that recent events have, most certainly, served to highlight the immediacy with which the challenge of poverty and progress needs to be addressed. The removal of the Taliban is not accompanied by freedom from oppression – this is a dangerous premise being flouted by the networks.

Interestingly, armed with a powerful agenda for tenable reforms in Afghanistan, the Left may well find allies, albeit reluctant ones, right across the Western spectrum. However, it is important to bear in mind that habits die hard. Though the end of the Cold War has certainly redefined the protagonists for the new war – Western democracies against Islamic fundamentalists – American involvement in the defeat of Daniel Ortega in the November 4 Nicaragua elections must serve as a chilling reminder that the CIA’s corridors are often visited by the ghost of Che Guevara.

Afghanistan’s revolutionary forces need to begin work immediately to identify a plan of action in the midst of a surfeit of Afghanistan news and inconsequential related developments occupying widespread international attention.

-- Rakesh Saxena