A gateway to the riches of Central Asia
Afghanistan: Behind the façade of 'democracy'
By Leslie Feinberg
An inordinate amount of imperialist media
attention on Afghanistan has focused on the wording of a new
constitution approved by the loya jirga, or grand assembly.
Like a huckster at a carnival shell game, the more the
big-money media can get the crowd to concentrate on the shells,
the less likely they are to realize the entire game is
rigged.
President George W. Bush, who in this election year no
longer talks about the "endless" character of his war for
empire in Central Asia and the Middle East, hailed the signing
of the new constitution on Jan. 4 as the dawn of democracy in
Afghanistan.
Is this genuine self-rule? Is the newly named Islamic
Republic of Afghanistan newly independent?
Some 11,700 U.S. troops occupy Afghanistan. The country's
government, army, police and judiciary were crushed or
dismantled during the Goliath versus David war against one of
the poorest countries on the planet.
After tight political control of the process, the new
constitution upholds the presidential system that Washington
pushed for, defeating the demand for a parliamentary system.
Elections for president--a formality in order to give Hamid
Karzai, who was appointed by the U.S., the mantle of being
elected--are slated to take place in six months.
Washington and its would-be allies are eager to slip a glove
of "sovereignty" over the iron fist of military occupation in
Afghanistan. Forces hostile to U.S. control now dominate much
of the southern and eastern regions of Afghanistan. Interior
Minister Ahmed Jalali officially concedes that the Taliban--the
religious group that the Pentagon invasion ousted--controls at
least 12 districts.
Donald Rumsfeld visited Kabul in early December to shore up
the shaky Karzai. The U.S. defense secretary also reportedly
met in Mazar-I Sharif with two Afghan generals, Abdul Rashid
Dostrum and Mohammad Atta, who come from the Uzbek and Tajik
peoples in the north, the area most improved by Soviet
development aid before the war.
As a show of strength during Rumsfeld's visit, the Pentagon
launched "Operation Avalanche." However, a few hours after he
left Kabul on Dec. 5, resistance forces fired a rocket at the
heavily-guarded U.S. Embassy in the capital.
During the three weeks in which delegates to the loya jirga
fought verbal battles over the wording of the constitution
inside a huge white tent in Kabul, the U.S. had to militarily
protect them. Warnings not to collaborate with the occupation
kept some delegates away.
Washington's handpicked titular leader, Karzai, is virtually
a prisoner in the capital, under the night-and-day protection
of U.S. corporate mercenary bodyguards. In order to
congratulate delegates at the grand assembly meeting, Karzai
had to be flown there by helicopter, even though it was only a
mile away from his office. It was too dangerous for him to
drive through the streets of Kabul.
Major decisions of the council were reportedly really made
by Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born U.S. ambassador to Kabul.
(Muslimmedia.com)
Dragged back a century
As the ink dried on the newly signed constitution, Karzai
announced, "It's the first time in the history of Afghanistan
that we take a step for the real power of the people."
Nothing could be further from the truth. It was his patron,
the U.S. government, that drowned the only truly progressive
government in Afghan history in blood when it funded and
organized a vicious war against it. In 1978, a progressive
revolution in the impoverished, semi-feudal country had tried
to carry out a social transformation in the direction of
socialism. The new government instituted land reform and
women's rights, built schools for girls and boys, and set up
literacy programs. It printed textbooks in many languages, and
sought to unite Dari, Pashtu, Uzbek, Turkic, Baluchi and other
nationalities in Afghanistan.
Had there been no outside intervention, the defeated
feudalists would have been relegated to the dustbin of history.
But in the Cold War era of imperialism, U.S. monopoly
capitalism was hell-bent on destroying this revolution on the
Soviet Union's borders.
Beginning early in 1979, the CIA began covertly financing
and arming landlord mercenary bands, according to admissions by
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former CIA
director Robert M. Gates. After the Afghan government appealed
to the Soviet Union for troops in December, Washington began
admitting it was funding an armed opposition, but claimed it
did so to help Afghanistan fight a "Soviet invasion."
During the 1980s, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and other
reactionary forces received some of the $8 billion Washington
shelled out on this dirty war. The revolutionary government was
defeated in 1992. After four years of factional fighting among
rival fundamentalist forces, the Taliban came to power in 1996.
They expected continued aid from the U.S., but the Soviet Union
had been overthrown by then and Washington wasn't that
interested in Afghanistan any more.
By Sept. 11, 2001, it was the Taliban who were on the
Pentagon's hit list.
Michael Meacher, a senior Labor Party member of Parliament
who had been a member of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's
cabinet, wrote in a Sept. 6, 2003, article in the Guardian of
London: "Until July 2001 the U.S. government saw the Taliban
regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would
enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil
and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through
Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But confronted
with the Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, the U.S.
representatives told them 'either you accept our offer of a
carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.'"
Today most of the schools and apartment complexes built
during the revolutionary period with help from the Soviet Union
lie in ruins. Bombing raids continue to turn the rural
countryside into a virtual moonscape. Hunger, disease and
poverty are rampant. And no matter how the new constitution is
worded for Western consumption, it's not going to change the
reality for the Afghan population, national minorities or
women. The most reactionary and repressive forces in the
country--the feudal landlords and their militias--have been
elevated by imperialist intervention and more than a quarter
century of war.
Poppy cultivation, which helped bankroll the
counter-revolutionary war, is burgeoning again. Armed rivalries
between regional factions and nationalities are becoming
increasingly explosive.
The country is run by a U.S. ambassador, Khalilzad, who was
a liaison between the U.S. energy company Unocal and the
Taliban government and had worked under National Security
Advisor Condoleezza Rice when she served as a director of
Chevron oil.
And the current U.S.-appointed "president," Karzai, worked
with the CIA to overthrow the Afghan revolution. He, too,
became a consultant for Unocal, which planned to build a
multi-billion-dollar, 1,000-mile natural gas pipeline across
Afghanistan from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.
Now, however, more than two years after the Sept. 11 attacks
provided Washington with an excuse to unleash its devastating
aerial bombardment of Afghanistan, it's proving difficult for
Pentagon Special Forces to protect a road from Kabul to
Kandahar, much less a pipeline traversing the country.
Afghanistan was seen as the shortest route from the oil and
gas fields of Central Asia to the sea, with the most favorable
terrain. But monopoly capital, inexorably compelled to create
profits, never puts all its eggs in one basket.
'Pipelineistan'
More than a century ago, the "Great Game" was a struggle
among capitalist powers--particularly the British Empire and
Tsarist Russia--to control the hub of the Eurasian landmass and
the warm-water ports of the Persian Gulf.
Today, after its defeat of the Soviet Union, U.S.
imperialism, with Britain as its junior partner, is leading the
struggle to command hegemony over the great wealth and
geo-political advantage of Central Asia.
On the shores of the Caspian Sea and under its waters lie
the world's biggest untapped oil and gas reserves, ranging in
estimated worth up to $4 trillion. The only catch is that the
region is landlocked. From the capitalist viewpoint, these
resources are worthless until they can be transported and sold
as commodities.
Under the cover of the "war on terror," the Pentagon has
quietly established military bases in the former Soviet
republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgizstan.
The area of this U.S. military boot heel on Central Asia is
commonly referred to as "Pipelineistan." For years, Enron,
Unocal, BP Amoco, ExxonMobil, Pennzoil, Atlantic Richfield,
Chevron, Texaco and other oil monopolies have been like
piranhas in a billion-dollar feeding frenzy to siphon off and
sell the rich oil and gas reserves.
ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP have already reportedly invested
more than $30 billion in production facilities in the region.
And construction of a $3.8-billion pipeline from Baku, the
capital of Azerbaijan, to the Turkish port of Ceyhan has
already begun. It's dubbed "the new Silk Road." (Media Monitors
Network, Dec. 14, 2003)
U.S. corporations are also embarking on a trans-Balkan
pipeline from the Black Sea across Bulgaria to the Adriatic
coast.
Through a massive infusion of money and political
manipulation, Washington and Wall Street have created client
governments in the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan and Georgia. "Washington has never made any secret
of its agenda to wrestle the Caucasus, the Caspian and Central
Asia away from Russia," reminds asiatimes online.
These vast and precious reserves of hydrocarbons were once
the collective property of the peoples of the Soviet Union.
This oil and gas lifeblood fueled its tremendous productive
growth.
Since overturning the Soviet Union--the achievement of a
momentous revolution of workers and peasants that lasted over
70 years--imperialism has shattered the former socialist camp
in Asia and Europe into vassal states, their populations
ethnically divided and economically devastated.
But Pax Pentagona can find no stability. Its military
machine and dreams of empire are bogged down by indefatigable
resistance in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan, as well as
Colombia, the Philippines and elsewhere.
Since the start of this "endless war," thousands of GIs have
returned home injured or in body bags. The Pentagon's available
troop strength is stretched thin and so is the endurance of its
foot soldiers, growing increasingly fed up with orders from the
brass to be an occupying army for U.S. corporations.
As a major troop replacement looms in the Middle East, eight
of the U.S. Army's 10 divisions will be on the move in the most
massive rotation of soldiers since the end of World War II.
Roads and highways will be congested with Pentagon convoys,
vulnerable to resistance.
It is not a need by the people for more oil or gas that is
fueling this war machine, it is the drive of the corporations
for super-profits.
Monopoly capital in its highest stage--imperialism--is
deepening the exploitation of the world's workers and
oppressed, waging endless war and widening the chasm between
wealth and poverty, stealing resources and fouling the
planet.
At the same time it has laid the basis for the collective
takeover of all that has been built by human labor and makes
such a revolutionary struggle inevitable. n
Reprinted from the Jan. 15, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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