10.10.1996

Cheerleaders for reaction

Around the left

The gruesome and tragic events in Afghanistan should force all of us to seriously examine and reflect upon how we have approached its turbulent history.

The latest issue of Socialist Worker fails quite miserably to address the real issues raised by the Afghan catastrophe. Hardly surprisingly though, as it refuses to recognise that there was even a revolution in Afghanistan in 1978. For it, all that happened in that year was that a “group of army officers staged a coup and put the party in power”. Worse still, if we are to believe Socialist Worker, the effect of this “coup” was actually to

“increase poverty in many parts of the country. That drove many of the poorest peasants to ally with their old landlords in rising against the regime in the name of Islam” (October 5).

From such a reading you would get the distinct impression that it was the revolution of 1978 which was responsible for the subsequent war and bloodshed, not the brutal imperialist-backed counterrevolutionary forces. Indeed, the SWP seems quite keen to provide ‘excuses’ for the Islamic counterrevolution. Thus, we are told that “When the Russian troops left the country the war had created incredible suffering” - if only the Red Army had not intervened, things would have turned out OK, we presume. As for US imperialism, we are blandly told that it made “much of the plight of Afghanistan while the Russians were there”. Weasel words which exonerate the bloody role of US imperialism.

Disgracefully, Socialist Worker informs the oppressed in Afghanistan, particularly women, that: “Tragically, the Taliban has no answer to the terrible crisis of the country either.” This will comfort those who have had their hands cut off or women who have been intimidated and assaulted by the forces of Taliban. It will come as a surprise to the new regime in Kabul, we suspect, who are convinced that they have the “answer” to Afghanistan’s problems.

Even more insultingly, Socialist Worker has the cheek to conclude with a note of tearful regret, like it is reporting on a particularly distressing divorce, “The fighting in Kabul may have ended for the time being. But the sorrow of the people of Afghanistan is far from finished.” 

Still, we should not be surprised. Unfortunately, Socialist Worker has a history of playing the reluctant cheerleader of Islamic counterrevolution. We saw this over Iran, where the SWP actually supported the bloody Khomeini regime on the grounds that it was ‘anti-imperialist’ (or, at least, ‘anti-US’).

The May/June 1980 issue of Socialist Review talks about “Muslim revolutionaries in Iran” - meaning the forces of Khomeini and counterrevolution. Even after seven years of the Khomeini regime, with its medievalist barbarism, Socialist Worker could not bear to denounce counterrevolution, telling us that it “is not acceptable for socialists simply to condemn Iran as ‘reactionary’” (March 18 1987).

The SWP is consistent in that it cannot bring itself to condemn the Taliban as “reactionary” either. Which is a bit curious really, as the February 1987 edition of Socialist Review stated that a mujahedeen victory “would probably produce a reactionary fundamentalist government well to the right of Khomeini” - the same edition, of course, called for a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The SWP was not alone, it has to be said. The Revolutionary Communist Party’s now defunct The Next Step argued along similar grounds, saying that Soviet withdrawal was necessary, as it enabled the US to use “the Afghanistan conflict to gain a foothold in Central Asia” (February 26 1987). Workers Power also replicated these specious views.

Revolutionaries who cannot tell a revolution from counterrevolution, or are afraid to label reactionaries for what they are, will mislead the working class, if not sabotage the revolution itself unless they are capable of openly correcting these mistakes.

Don Preston