AFGHANISTAN: The Country, the Taliban and
Why History Didn't Begin on September 11th
The information used in this article is taken from the book: Taliban by Ahmed Rashid Yale University Press, $14.95. The author is a Pakistani journalist who has spent most of his career reporting on the region-he has personally met and interviewed many of the Taliban's leaders. The book includes details on how and why the Taliban came to power, the government's oppression of ordinary citizens (especially women), the heroin trade, oil intrigue, and-in one chapter-Bin Laden's rise to power. The role of the U.S. government is well-documented. Warning: Many of the facts the author presents will outrage you! And that's a good thing, because the American public ought to know about the role of Pakistan, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and international oil companies in aiding and abetting the Taliban until very recently (the U.S. gave $43 million to the Taliban in 5/01). All that being said, the author does an excellent job answering the question "How did the Taliban come to power?"
When the U.S. government made Bin Laden and the Taliban enemy #1, we as a populace were supposed to accept that and not question where the Taliban came from or what happened before September 11th. Many people are struggling to figure out what is the right thing to do. But without understanding how things got this way, you will have a hard time coming to the correct solution.
Soviet Invasion
The fact of the matter is that Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan had nothing to do with terror and terrorism prior to the Soviet invasion in 1979. While the U.S. was trying to bully and intimidate Iran's new Islamic rulers (the Iranian masses had just overthrown the Shah of Iran and kicked out the U.S.), in next-door Afghanistan the U.S. was arming and organizing the Islamic fundamentalists-who had religious ties to the conservative Sunni Muslems of the Saudi Arabian ruling class. Within weeks of the Soviet invasion, the U.S. began a program of covert support to anti-Soviet Islamic mujahadeen fighters.
By 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote: "We now have the opportunity to give the Soviet Union its Vietnam." The Soviets poured $45 billion in 20 years of war which resulted in the deaths of 1.5 million people and a devastated country where the average life expectancy is 40.
Taliban Origins
The Taliban originated when the CIA with ISI (the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate) recruited radical Muslims from around the world to fight with the Afghan mujahadeen against the Soviet Union. The United States wanted to demonstrate that the entire Muslim world was fighting against the USSR along with Afghans and American benefactors. And in 1980, Osama bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan, bringing funds from the reactionary Saudi Arabian ruling class to the mujahadeen. When the CIA and ISI decided to train thousands of Muslims from around the world to fight in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden was one of the key organizers in this effort. The author estimates that after 1982 more than 100,000 Muslims from dozens of countries received political or military training in the CIA-backed camps of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
When the USSR disintegrated the U.S. said that this was a failure of communism, but many Muslims saw it as a victory for Islam. Many wanted to take on the U.S. with their new found strength. What followed the Soviet defeat were four years of mass rape, intense civil war-50,000 people died when the mujahadeen broke up into warring factions. Many of the leaders of that civil war are now the commanders in the Northern Alliance and have returned to power in the cities. The Northern Alliance is a group of mutually hostile forces united by their hate for the Taliban and their desire for foreign support. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the former head of the CIA's mujahadeen, is now one of the Pashtun leaders of the Northern Alliance. The CIA promoted the fundamentalist Heymatyar to leadership of this mujahadeen. Hekmatyar made his name as a student at Kabul University in the 60s by leading a group that threw acid in the faces of unveiled female students.
An immense narcotics trade had developed under the umbrella of the CIA-ISI covert supply line to the Afghan mujahadeen. As in Vietnam where the CIA chose to ignore the drug trade by the anti-Communist guerillas, it was the same in Afghanistan-the U.S. also chose to ignore it-until now. Today Afghanistan supplies 80% of Europe's supply of heroin and 50% of the world supply.
It was amid this turmoil that the Taliban arose. Today's Taliban are only the latest in a long line of conquerors. Taliban were children of the jihad but disillusioned with factionalism. They saw themselves as cleansers and purifiers of guerrilla war gone astray. Many were born in Pakistani refugee camps, educated in Pakistani madrassas (special religious schools which teach the Taliban's interpretation of Islam) and don't know their own history. They only know war.
They have no memories of the past, or any plans for the future. The present is everything. They are orphans of the war, and the village mullahs were the only things they could hold onto and give their lives meaning.
Members of the Taliban didn't grow up around women. Most felt threatened by this half of the human race and for them it was easier to lock women away, especially if this was ordained by mullahs.
For some Afghans the Taliban created hopes that a movement led by simple Islamic students with an agenda of bringing peace to the country might succeed in finally deposing the warlord factions which had devastated people's lives since the Soviet regime in Kabul had been overthrown in April 1992. In 1990 Bin Laden, disillusioned by bickering among the mujahadeen returned to Saudi Arabia. There he founded a welfare organization for Arab-Afghan vets, some 4000 of whom had settled in Mecca alone. He gave money to families of those killed. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, he lobbied the Saudi royal family to organize popular defense and raise a force from the Afghan War vets to fight for Iraq. Instead the Saudis invited in the Americans. The Gulf War fueled Bin Laden with more hatred of the U.S. and he left Saudi Arabia to join the anti-American jihad.
Western popular perception has consciously equated Islam with the Taliban and Bin Laden style terrorism-but as we said: Before the Taliban, Islamic extremism had never flourished in Afghanistan. The U.S. and its allies planted and nourished it. Bin Laden was "our boy" and our government didn't say a peep about the Taliban's atrocities or their war on women. In fact, most of the Islamic world never said a word about the Taliban's extremism. Pakistan, Saudi and Arab states did not issue statements calling for rights for women.
What's Really Going On?
At the heart of this regional standoff is a battle for vast oil and gas riches. Whoever controls the Caspian region has a counterweight to the Persian Gulf-a lever over other oil-producing states hooking up a new energy source to the world market.
If the pipelines go north through Russia to Europe, Russia will reestablish control over the Caspian region and the European imperialists will have a source of energy that the U.S. does not control.
If a major pipe goes west, from Baku in Azerbaijan, across Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan-then the U.S. expects to have control over that oil and everyone who needs it.
If the pipes go south through Iran to its refineries and harbors, then the U.S. containment of Iran is broken. And, in that case, the Caucasus region becomes an inland extension of the Persian Gulf-not a separate competitive region.
And, if a U.S.-built pipeline goes south through Afghanistan to Pakistan, Russia loses control in the CARs, and the U.S. gains power over those who use its oil-especially Pakistan and India.
Oil was not the trigger that started this war. But the U.S. imperialists have seized on the events of September 11th to pursue their goals of dominating the oil wealth of this region.
Ten years ago, the U.S. started planning to run oil and gas pipelines through the Afghan town of Herat. This month, the U.S. bombers attacked that same desert town from the air-reportedly killing a hundred people in a hospital. There is a connection between these two events.
oz.net |
