22.11.2001

After Kabul?s fall

Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan, discusses the situation in Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taliban. This is an edited version of his article

The Northern Alliance took over Kabul on November 13. For all their menacing jihad rhetoric, the Taliban turned tail and fled when the Northern Alliance forces arrived. Kabul was taken over without any serious resistance. The myth of ?invincibility? created by the Taliban and their supporters was broken within days.

This shamefaced surrender will shatter morale. It was not a tactical retreat, as it is being presented by some media outlets, but a total collapse by the Taliban.

The US-sponsored Northern Alliance took over Kabul only a day after Bush pleaded with them not to do so. Bush wanted to please the visiting Pakistan military ruler, general Musharaf. The Pakistani government is now pleading for a UN peacekeeping force to help form a broad-based government - it had to say something after its president had been publicly humiliated. The US was desperate for an immediate and clear victory after another plane crashed in New York on November 12. That is why Bush?s call on the NA not to enter Kabul was set aside.

The surrender of Kabul and its disintegrating social base shows the absolutely dictatorial nature of Taliban. The ordinary citizens of Kabul seemed quite delighted over this victory. The Northern Alliance issued an immediate order allowing women to go out to work. But that was just to please its masters in the imperialist countries. The Northern Alliance majority has a policy on women no different to that of the Taliban. Once the Northern Alliance has strengthened its power base, the real face of these fundamentalists will be revealed.

US imperialism has once again taken the view that ?my enemy?s enemy is my friend?. It has paid a heavy price for supporting and promoting religious fundamentalists against the former Soviet Union in the past. It is repeating the same mistake. If it continues to support the NA, it will bring into being another monster that it will be unable to control in a very short time.

Defeat in Kabul for the Taliban is no victory for US imperialism. It had to rely on the support of another religious fundamentalist group. The NA might make changes in its outlook initially, but it will not change the aim of continuing the islamic revolution in Afghanistan.

The Taliban will now lose power in Kandahar as well. Their will to fight a guerrilla war after retreating to the mountains will not be very strong. They will be rooted out of Afghanistan for the time being. Bin Laden may lose his life, along with many other Taliban leaders. But religious fundamentalism will not be defeated by the death of its best known leaders.

The strategy of the Taliban of moving into the tribal areas on the Pakistan border will not meet with success. The Taliban chapter of history has ended and it will not be long before they will lose their remaining power bases in all parts of Afghanistan. But it will not be completely obliterated and the extreme wing of this movement will carry on, using suicide attacks, guerrilla actions and so on.

The takeover of Kabul by the NA has brought more difficulties for the Musharaf military regime. It is the ?fly in the ointment? of general Musharaf?s strategy. It seems that US imperialism has played a double game. On the one hand, it has been assuring the Musharaf regime that it will not do anything detrimental to its interests. On the other, it armed the NA to take on the Taliban. US imperialism was very concerned to ensure that its own soldiers should not be killed. So it armed the NA to do its dirty work. It gave them air support, enabling them to advance on Kabul. The reaction of Blair and Bush indicates that the taking of Kabul came as no surprise, that they had planned for this.

The military regime in Pakistan has been taken aback by the speed of events and the Taliban?s implosion. Pakistani and Arab jihadis abandoned in Kabul were massacred by the NA forces. The Taliban ditched these foreign mujahedin and left on their own, the night before the fall of Kabul. Their bodies, left lying in the streets of Kabul, are grim portents of the future actions that will be undertaken by the NA.

US imperialism has accepted Musharaf?s strategy of both supporting the mujahedin in Kashmir and opposing the Taliban. The Musharaf regime will eventually have no other option than to beat a retreat from its Kashmiri policy. It cannot have two contradictory policies on the issue of terrorism. It has to choose one.

However, if general Musharaf does not listen to US imperialism on Kashmir, he may lose power or even his life. The Bush administration has been praising the Pakistani regime for its brave and timely stance in support of the US ?war on terrorism?. But Kabul?s fall has changed many things. It will have a decisive effect on the US?s strategy in relation to Pakistan. Now the focus of the world?s attention will be Kabul and not Islamabad.

Kabul?s fall was not a surprise for us here in Pakistan. Religious fundamentalism was fighting a war it was bound to lose. The Pakistani regime deserted them and you cannot fight a war with religious feelings alone. We said again and again that the Taliban would crumble in a short space of time. Its regime was the most hated by the masses in the entire history of Afghanistan. It wanted to impose its medieval policies by force. People were coerced into supporting them and they never had any mass social base. The religious fundamentalist forces were a tiny minority of zealots who were only able to hold together with the support of international fundamentalist allies.

Afghanistan will become further polarised and a civil war situation will remain. National divisions will reassert themselves over religious ones. Afghanistan is a jungle of different nationalities, each with its own tribal identity. This mess cannot be solved on the basis of capitalism. Capitalism can only further widen the national divide. There is not going to be a massive influx of US dollars to stabilise the situation. The country will be tossed some peanuts and then left to fend for itself.

Once again Afghanistan has seen a change of power after five years of the Taliban?s brutal rule. But once again there will be no relief for the poverty of the masses. There are attempts to establish a broad based government under the influence of US imperialism. The Northern Alliance position has been considerably enhanced. It can dictate terms, but it is unable to unite the contending nationalities. Any government based around the ageing king, Zahir Shah, will be very short lived, as it will not be able to control the situation.

Pakistan?s government - which supported the Taliban for seven years - no longer has any allies in Afghanistan. If the new government is not to the liking of the military regime, that could open up a new phase of hostility. A war between Pakistan and Afghanistan cannot be ruled out in these circumstances.

The Labour Party Pakistan will help the tiny forces of the left in Afghanistan to take advantage of the current situation while it lasts and assist it in building itself inside Afghanistan. The weekly Mazdoor Jeddojuhd is planning to print a monthly edition in Pushto in collaboration with the Afghanistan Revolutionary Labour Organisation.

The international left must continue its opposition to US imperialism?s war in Afghanistan and the installation of a puppet regime. The war has not ended. It has entered a new phase. The anti-globalisation movement, linked to the peace movement, must be strengthened.

One fundamentalist group is gone. Another, with the help of the US, has come to power. We counterpose to this the fight for democratic and socialist change.