First British Empire, now U.S.
Afghans resist foreign domination
By Deirdre Griswold
It is now more than three weeks since the U.S. started
bombing Afghanistan--a high-tech assault on one of the poorest
countries in the world.
The excuse for raining death and destruction on villages,
hospitals, food warehouses and columns of refugees is that
Afghanistan "harbors terrorists." Since not one of the 19
people who the U.S. government claims hijacked the planes that
rammed the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was from Afghanistan,
it is not at all surprising that the Afghan people think it's
the other way around--that the Pentagon is the terrorist.
On Oct. 31, CNN correspondent Nic Robertson reported
directly from Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, on how
Afghanis feel about the war. He was asked repeatedly by the CNN
anchorperson whether the people were free to express
themselves. "Absolutely," said Robertson. "In every one of the
sites we visit, a huge crowd gathers around us. People are
ready to put forward their ideas and views."
The anchorperson, sitting in Atlanta, persisted: "Their
feelings over there could be the result of the control that the
Taliban has over what they have been allowed to see and hear.
What of the Taliban officials that have been guiding you
through this area? Do you get a sense that, because they are
trying to give you a good propaganda show by taking you just to
these civilian areas where there have been some injuries, that
there is a sense of some erosion of confidence toward
them?"
Robertson gave an emphatic "No," and added, "The general
sense that we have had here, as a group of 26 journalists, is
that people are speaking their minds, they are coming out and
speaking quite strongly. And when one person perhaps comes and
speaks out against the United States or President Bush, there
is a cheer through the crowds."
The idea that the bombing has weakened the Afghan will to
resist foreign domination is sheer Pentagon propaganda. On the
contrary, according to Robertson and other journalists on the
spot, it has rallied the Afghans behind the Taliban, the
ultra-conservative religious movement that now rules the
country after a vicious war, funded and organized by the U.S.,
brought down the only truly progressive government in Afghan
history.
No ground war yet
Let's not forget that, for all the boasting about the
formidable strength of the U.S. Special Forces, they have gone
only once into defended areas in Afghanistan. They made two
simulataneous raids on the night of Oct. 19-20, one at what the
Pentagon said was a command-and-control center outside
Kandahar, the other at an airfield somewhere in southern
Pakistan.
At first this venture was described in glowing terms. It
proved the U.S. could carry out a ground war. The "Vietnam
syndrome" had been broken. The Rangers had captured important
documents.
But, little by little, another picture has leaked out. The
U.S. troops didn't find anything of use in their quest for
Osama bin Laden. Two Rangers were killed when one of their
helicopters crashed--supposedly back in Pakistan, but the
Taliban soon showed reporters a piece of landing gear broken
off a helicopter.
And the Afghanis who defended these sites put up a fierce
fight, despite the overwhelming advantage the Rangers enjoyed
with their night-vision equipment, instant satellite
communications with Washington, Black Hawk helicopters, heavy
weapons and so on.
So while there had been talk that a ground war was imminent,
the war continues in the air--very high up in the air, in fact,
since anti-aircraft has come uncomfortably close to U.S. planes
in the north.
For all the flag-waving and attempts to brand anyone against
the war as a terrorist, the U.S. government knows that
opposition at home will grow enormously if U.S. ground troops
get bogged down in Afghanistan.
British couldn't colonize Afghanistan
The Pentagon planners, by this time, must know what happened
to Britain's attempts to colonize Afghanistan in the 19th
century.
A British army entered Kandahar in 1839 after Lord Auckland,
governor general of England's most prized possession, India,
had ordered the invasion of Afghan istan. They crowned a puppet
king and marched on Kabul by August of 1840.
The Encyclopedia Britannica itself tells the story: "The
Afghans, however, would tolerate neither a foreign occupation
nor a king imposed on them by a foreign power, and
insurrections broke out." The war continued for two years.
After the British "political agent" Sir William Hay
Macnaghten was killed "during a parlay with the Afghans," some
4,500 British troops finally marched out of Kabul on Jan. 6,
1842. But it wasn't over yet. "Bands of Afghans swarmed around
them, and the retreat ended in a blood bath."
This was the heyday of the British Empire. The lords in
London wanted to consolidate their control, from Egypt to
India. So back they went in 1878 for another two-year war. They
forced Afghanistan to agree to conduct its foreign relations
"in accordance 'with the wishes and advice' of the British
government. This British triumph, however, was short-lived. On
Sept. 3, 1879, the British envoy and his escort were murdered
in Kabul."
More troops rushed in and reoccupied Kabul. Ya'qub, the
leader who had signed the agreement with Britain, abdicated and
was given exile in India. But the resistance of the people was
so great that once again the British had to withdraw in
1881.
After World War I, the anti-British movement in Afghanistan
seized power and launched the Third Anglo-Afghan War. By this
time, the Western imperialists were so frightened by the
Russian Revolution that Britain agreed to the Treaty of
Rawalpindi on Aug. 8, 1919, which "gained the Afghans the
conduct of their own foreign affairs."
However, "Before signing the final document with the
British, the Afghans concluded a treaty of friendship with the
new Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union; Afghanistan thereby
became one of the first nations to recognize the Soviet
government."
Britain was so burned by its attempts to subdue Afghanistan
that it became a topic of books and poems. Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle's fictional Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes mysteries
often refers to the wounds he received fighting in the Khyber
Pass, the main route between Afghanistan and today's
Pakistan.
Does the Pentagon today similarly underestimate the human
element when it embarks so confidently on its high-tech
conquests?
The hatred of foreign colonizers burns very deeply in the
breasts of the Afghan people. And, just as anyone who opposed
colonialism had to sympathize with the Afghans against the
British invaders of the 19th century, regardless of the class
character of Afghanistan's leaders, so today all around the
world who know that imperialist rule brings only oppression,
poverty and humiliation of the masses want the Afghans to
succeed in their resistance to the U.S.-British war.
Reprinted from the Nov. 8, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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