Afghan desperation grows under U.S. occupation

John McCain led a bipartisan group of U.S. senators to Afghanistan in February, where he told the world media that they "had come to congratulate the Afghan people for the economic and political progress made since U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001." (Reuters, Feb. 22)

Bad timing.

On the very same day that McCain, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold and two other senators were giving the Bush administration's occupation of Afghan istan their stamp of approval, the United Nations released its 2004 Human Development Index. The report, which compares conditions in 178 developing countries, showed that Afghanistan ranks sixth from the bottom.

Life expectancy there is a scanty 44.5 years--20 years lower than neighboring countries.

The report concluded that Afghanistan has the very worst education system in the world, and one of the worst adult literacy rates: 28.7 percent.

"News" accounts that reach the United States through the filter of the corporate media monopolies have been extolling the virtues of the war and occupation, just as McCain, Clinton and the other senators are doing now. Many television programs have been devoted to showing that this military conquest has liberated the Afghan people from the oppressive rule of the Taliban.

Military operations by the 18,000 U.S. occupation troops cost billions of dollars. The number of dead and wounded--especially Afghanis--continues to rise.

On Feb. 12, villagers near the Shinand U.S. air base in western Afghanistan shouted "Death to America" in a demonstration protesting the killing of two young men. They had been cutting firewood near a road as a military convoy passed. When they ran away, Special Forces troops mowed them down, said observers, and then came and finished one off with bullets to the chest.

"It affected the community very strongly," said the village chief, Muham mad Amin Kamin. "It is very sensitive. The people can become independent and fight against the Americans." (New York Times, Feb. 18)

The military brass are so worried about the explosive effects of this incident that they've launched an investigation.

Those whose job is to provide justification for whatever the capitalist government in Washington decides to do keep trying to put a humanitarian face on this brutal occupation.

In particular, they claim that women have been liberated and are now free to progress. Hillary Clinton's presence on the delegation was supposed to highlight this. But the figures in the report show otherwise.

"Most glaring are the inequalities that affect women and children, still some of the worst social indicators in the world today, said Alistair McKechnie, country director of the World Bank, which financed the report along with the Canadians and the United Nations. One woman dies from pregnancy-related causes about every 30 minutes, and maternal mortality rates are 60 times higher than in industrialized countries, the report said.

"One-fifth of the children die before the age of 5, 80 percent of them from preventable diseases, one of the worst rates in the world. Only 25 percent of the population has access to clean drinking water, and one in eight children die from lack of clean water." (New York Times, Feb. 22)

What was behind decades
of war?

Apologists for the U.S. will point to the decades of war in Afghanistan as responsible for its deplorable state, and urge that the new U.S.-installed government of Hamid Karzai be given a chance. But this argument leaves out a crucial factor: U.S. imperialism, including both Democratic and Republican administrations, is responsible for these decades of war.

For a brief period, beginning in 1978, Afghanistan had a secular, democratic government that tried to implement land reform, literacy programs and equal rights for women. It came up against the old feudal order. But not just them.

Because the revolutionary government was led by leftists, the U.S. within months began covertly organizing an armed opposition. The CIA spent billions creating an armed force out of various landlord militias, many of them extreme religious fundamentalists. That was the period when Osama bin Laden, among others, worked with the CIA in attempting to overthrow the government led by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Anahita Ratebzada, one of the leaders of that party, had founded the first women's rights organization in the country.

Afghan women were set way back when the progressive government was finally overthrown, but Washington was gleeful. It had drawn the USSR into the conflict--Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, later bragged about it--and that had helped weaken the Soviet Union.

The agenda for Afghanistan then, as now, was being set by the billionaire transnational corporations that despise and fear socialist revolutions and national liberation movements.

Senator McCain, speaking for the U.S. military-industrial complex, now declares that "permanent" U.S. military bases are needed in Afghanistan--which borders Iran and is viewed by the politically powerful energy companies as an ideal transit route for oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea.

Like Iraq, Afghanistan can only begin to make real progress when it is free of imperialist intervention and occupation.