Afghanistan

Support refugees from Afghanistan

The Taliban’s rapid seizure of power across Afghanistan threatens the rights and lives of millions. The left and the workers’ movement here and around the world have a duty to fight for rights and protections for refugees. That means raising the issues below at every level of our trade unions, the Labour Party, and other community and campaign groups. Much focus has been on those at risk due to their work with Western militaries or embassies, or with the previous government. We cannot limit our solidarity to a transactional relationship between individual workers and the British state – we...

Stalinism, Islamism and the tragedy of Afghanistan

Originally published in 2002 as "Afghanistan and the shape of the 20th century" "Two conditions, at least, are necessary for a victorious social revolution - highly developed productive forces and a proletariat adequately prepared for it. But in 1871 both of these conditions were lacking. French capitalism was still poorly developed, and France was at that time mainly a petty-bourgeois country (artisans, peasants, shopkeepers, etc.). On the other hand, there was no workers' party; the working class had not gone through a long school of struggle and was unprepared, and for the most part did not...

Afghanistan, the Taliban and the British left: lessons from 2001

Everyone on the left is saying that the current disaster in Afghanistan shows that no-one should rely on US militarism to deal with the danger of Islamist militarism like the Taliban's. And that's true. No-one on the left is claiming that the Taliban taking Kabul is a victory for liberation, anti-imperialism, or self-determination. Right again: it isn't. It's a result which threatens to crush all women's rights and almost all personal liberties, let along collective civil rights, for the people of Afghanistan's cities especially. But then why did a large chunk of the left implicitly or...

Reading on Afghanistan

• Disaster in Afghanistan: how the Taliban won (August 2021) • A disastrous invasion and a disastrous withdrawal (August 2021) • Afghanistan, the left, and the "third camp" (August 2021) • Timeline 1921-2021 • Support Afghan women against the Taliban (August 2021) • Afghanistan and the shape of the 20th century : how Afghanistan ended up where it is now, and its significance as an epitome of the role of Stalinism in the shape of the 20th century (March 2002) • Socialists and the 1979-89 war : the theoretical arguments used by many on the left to justify support or semi-support for the Russian...

Disaster in Afghanistan

The USA is sending 5,000 troops to Afghanistan, boosting its military presence above anything since late 2020. The UK is sending 600, and the USA has another 4,000 stationed nearby in support. These troops were not sent to assist the collapsing Afghan army as the Taliban entered Kabul (on 15 August) after sweeping almost all the country's cities since it took Zaranj on 6 August, and a series of rural areas since 4 May. Or to protect the people of Kabul, including the thousands of refugees who have fled there since the Taliban took their home cities. Rather the opposite: the US and UK sent the...

Women's Fightback: Support Afghan women against the Taliban

The Taliban continues to make rapid territorial gains in Afghanistan following the announcement that almost all foreign troops will leave by September. The Taliban has captured half of the territory of Afghanistan, particularly the rural areas, and several provincial capitals. Fighting has increased around the major cities of Herat, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar. Tens of thousands of Afghans have applied for visas to leave the country, fearing Taliban reprisals. The US and Afghan government have responded by airstrikes and bombing of Taliban positions. Workers’ Liberty has never supported the US...

Against the Taliban surge: and no confidence in "interventions"

As US, British, and other troops quit Afghanistan, predictably the Taliban is surging forward. The Taliban had been stalling in negotiations for a post-withdrawal settlement, and there had been an increase in sectarian-Islamist attacks on civilians in the cities (some disavowed by the Taliban, but with not much credibility). Our answer is not to plead with the USA to put its troops back in Afghanistan. US troops had been there for 20 years, and left the Taliban stronger than they were when Northern Alliance forces (with fairly light US support at the time) routed the Taliban in 2001. Nor is it...

Afghanistan: a new phase of the war

On 14 April, Joe Biden said that US troops would quit Afghanistan by 11 September, five months later than the deadline earlier set by Donald Trump. British and other NATO forces have said they will withdraw too. War has gone on since the US helped the Northern Alliance push out the Taliban in 2001, and the series of wars with no real break since Afghanistan’s Stalinist PDPA seized power in 1978 and sparked a rural uprising which in turn pushed the USSR into invading and trying to gain control in 1979. Next: a new phase of war. The Taliban will be able to extend its areas of control. The Kabul...

Afghanistan: expect anything except peace

Joe Biden will take over as president from Donald Trump on 20 January with the USA in the midst of its second or maybe third attempt to extricate itself from Afghanistan. After the 11 September 2001 Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, the USA sent troops and support to help Northern Alliance warlords in Afghanistan to drive out the Taliban, which then controlled most of the country and provided a reserve base for Al Qaeda. The Northern Alliance won quickly. The Taliban abandoned the capital city, Kabul, which they had ruled since 1996, before Northern Alliance troops even...

Afghanistan and the US pledge to get out

On 29 February, the USA signed a deal with the Taliban to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan within 14 months. The US has been at war in Afghanistan with the Taliban, an Islamist movement based in the lawless north-west of Pakistan, for over 18 years. In December 2019, the Afghan women’s right activist and secularist Malalai Joya, on a visit to Italy, declared that in 18 years of what she called “NATO occupation… things have just gotten worse” in Afghanistan. The longer the troops have stayed, the worse the prospects when they withdraw have become. Solidarity has long supported withdrawal...

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