[Peace-discuss] Afghan history by Michael Parenti

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

>Michael Parenti was for a time at the University of Illinois, a real rabble
rouser who had to go.

 

I knew Parenti when he was here, as did Belden Fields.  I was a grad student
in Political Science and Belden was on the faculty.  I am not sure how to
take the comment above.  Are you stating this tongue-in-cheek or asserting
it as a serious comment?  

 

Parenti  was a serious activist who took serious street actions and was
willing to pay the price for his actions and commitment.  He stood in direct
contrast to many of the faculty and administration on  what was a very
conservative, establishment supporting institution, who were either "don't
rock the boat" liberals or people who had vested interests in the
establishment whom they acted as sub-contractors for, depending on the
establishment for grants, consulting jobs, and personal prestige,
reputation,  and notoriety.  This was during the Viet Nam War years of the
1960's  when student-faculty demonstrations, sit-ins, and rebellion against
the establishment and its policies and institutions were common and frequent
on college campuses;  They challenged (1) the university administrations
paternalistic attitudes and actions, (2) faculty and departmental support
and involvement with corporate and governmental programs and projects that
negatively impacted on peoples around the world, (3) the use of the
university as an occupational training facility and research arm of the
government, its military and intelligence, defense and security operations
as well as for the corporations and the military-industrial-governmental
complex in general, and (4) the culture of conformity and "go along to get
along" cultural values that permeated society and higher education.  It was
the cold war era; and many intellectuals had been intimidated into
submission by the McCarthy era which proceeded the 1960's;  they remained
silent or joined the ranks of the establishment via taking positions in
government, think tanks, institutions of higher learning, and consulting
firms engaged in contract research for corporations.  Parenti was one of the
rarities who rejected this and challenged those who accepted it and or were
apathetic.  This is what made him unacceptable to the powers that be in the
university as well as his respectable and responsible gray flannel suited or
tweed sports coat adorned academic colleagues.  He was easy to get rid of
since he only had a non-tenured temporary research position with the
University primarily in the Institute of Government.

 

At the time another political scientist from the political science
department, who represented the traditional establishment and academic
culture,  had been made Chancellor of the University.  His response to any
really radical faculty member or student who engaged in what was viewed as
being too questioning and controversial behavior or speech was very heavy
handed and fascistic.  It probably was the chancellor who had to go and
eventually did as did Parenti.  It was the Chancellor who actually was a
betrayer of the traditional academic values of free speech and exchange of
ideas no matter how disturbing or radical that speech or those ideas might
be  and not Parenti.  But Parenti presented a threat to the established
practices and sources of political and economic support that the University,
its departments, and its faculty tended to rely on.

 

Thus, if you intended your statement to be a serious one, I am surprised to
hear someone who claims to be a progressive suggesting that it was
legitimate to get rid of a rabble rouser because they expressed very
forcefully radical beliefs, opinions, ideas, and analyses and acted on their
ideas and beliefs as opposed to indulging in intellectual masturbation.
Consequently, I am inclined to think that you made the statement
tongue-in-cheek.

 

 

From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
[mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Brussel
Morton K.
Sent: Friday, November 28, 2008 4:07 PM
To: Peace Discuss
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Afghan history by Michael Parenti

 

Michael Parenti was for a time at the University of Illinois, a real rabble
rouser who had to go.

--mkb

 

Afghanistan, Another Untold Story

 

November, 28 2008 By Parenti, Michael

Michael Parenti's ZSpace Page

 

 

Barack Obama is on record as advocating a military escalation in
Afghanistan. Before sinking any deeper into that quagmire, we might do well
to learn something about recent Afghani history and the role played by the
United States.

 

Less than a month after the 11 September  2001 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, US leaders began an all-out aerial assault upon
Afghanistan, the country purportedly harboring Osama bin Laden and his al
Qaeda terrorist organization. More than twenty years earlier, in 1980, the
United States intervened to stop a Soviet "invasion" of that country. Even
some leading progressive writers, who normally take a more critical view of
US policy abroad, treated the US intervention against the Soviet-supported
government as "a good thing." The actual story is not such a good thing.

 

Some Real History

 

Since feudal times the landholding system in Afghanistan had remained
unchanged, with more than 75 percent of the land owned by big landlords who
comprised only 3 percent of the rural population. In the mid-1960s,
democratic revolutionary elements coalesced to form the People's Democratic
Party (PDP). In 1973, the king was deposed, but the government that replaced
him proved to be autocratic, corrupt, and unpopular. It in turn was forced
out in 1978 after a massive demonstration in front of the presidential
palace, and after the army intervened on the side of the demonstrators.

 

The military officers who took charge invited the PDP to form a new
government under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a poet and
novelist. This is how a Marxist-led coalition of national democratic forces
came into office. "It was a totally indigenous happening. Not even the CIA
blamed the USSR for it," writes John Ryan, a retired professor  at the
University of Winnipeg, who was conducting an agricultural research project
in Afghanistan at about that time.

 

The Taraki government proceeded to legalize labor unions, and set up a
minimum wage,  a progressive income tax, a literacy campaign, and programs
that gave ordinary people greater access to health care, housing, and public
sanitation. Fledgling peasant cooperatives were started and price reductions
on some key foods were imposed.

 

The government also continued a campaign begun by the king to emancipate
women from their age-old tribal bondage. It provided public education for
girls and for the children of various tribes.  A report in the San Francisco
Chronicle (17 November 2001) noted that "Kabul was once a cosmopolitan city.
Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Women studied agriculture,
engineering and business at the city's university. Afghan women held
government jobs--in the 1980s, there were seven female members of
parliament. Women drove cars, traveled and went on dates. Fifty percent of
university students were women."

 

The Taraki government moved to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppy.
Until then Afghanistan had been producing more than 70 percent of the opium
needed for the world's heroin supply. The government also abolished all
debts owed by farmers, and began developing a major land reform program.
Ryan believes that it was a "genuinely popular government and people looked
forward to the future with great hope."

 

But serious opposition arose from several quarters. The feudal landlords
opposed the land reform program that infringed on their holdings. And
tribesmen and fundamentalist mullahs vehemently opposed the government's
dedication to gender equality and the education of women and children.

 

Because of its egalitarian and collectivist economic policies the Taraki
government also incurred the opposition of the US national security state.
Almost immediately after the PDP coalition came to power, the CIA, assisted
by Saudi and Pakistani military, launched a large scale intervention into
Afghanistan on the side of the ousted feudal lords, reactionary tribal
chieftains, mullahs, and opium traffickers.

 

A top official within the Taraki government was Hafizulla Amin, believed by
many to have been recruited by the CIA during the several years he spent in
the United States as a student. In September 1979, Amin seized state power
in an armed coup. He executed Taraki, halted the reforms, and murdered,
jailed, or exiled thousands of Taraki supporters as he moved toward
establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state. But within two months, he was
overthrown by PDP remnants including elements within the military.

 

It should be noted that all this happened before  the Soviet military
intervention. National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski publicly
admitted--months before Soviet troops entered the country--that the Carter
administration was providing huge sums to Muslim extremists to subvert the
reformist government. Part of that effort involved brutal attacks by the
CIA-backed mujahideen against schools and teachers in rural areas.

 

In late 1979, the seriously besieged PDP government asked Moscow to send a
contingent of troops to help ward off the mujahideen (Islamic guerrilla
fighters) and foreign mercenaries, all recruited, financed, and well-armed
by the CIA. The Soviets already had been sending aid for projects in mining,
education, agriculture, and public health. Deploying troops represented a
commitment of a more serious and politically dangerous sort. It took
repeated requests from Kabul before Moscow agreed to intervene militarily.

 

Jihad and Taliban, CIA Style

 

The Soviet intervention was a golden opportunity for the CIA to transform
the tribal resistance into a holy war, an Islamic jihad to expel the godless
communists from Afghanistan. Over the years the United States and Saudi
Arabia expended about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The CIA and its
allies recruited, supplied, and trained almost 100,000 radical mujahideen
from forty Muslim countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria,
and Afghanistan itself.  Among those who answered the call was Saudi-born
millionaire right-winger Osama bin Laden and his cohorts.

 

After a long and unsuccessful war, the Soviets evacuated the country in
February 1989. It is generally thought that the PDP Marxist government
collapsed immediately after the Soviet departure. Actually, it retained
enough popular support to fight on for another three years, outlasting the
Soviet Union itself by a year.

 

Upon taking over Afghanistan, the mujahideen fell to fighting among
themselves.  They ravaged the cities, terrorized civilian populations,
looted, staged mass executions, closed schools, raped thousands of women and
girls, and reduced half of Kabul to rubble. In 2001 Amnesty International
reported that the mujahideen used sexual assault as "a method of
intimidating vanquished populations and rewarding soldiers.'"

 

Ruling the country gangster-style and looking for lucrative sources of
income, the tribes ordered farmers to plant opium poppy. The Pakistani ISI,
a close junior partner to the CIA, set up hundreds of heroin laboratories
across Afghanistan. Within two years of the CIA's arrival, the
Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland became the biggest producer of heroin in the
world.

 

Largely created and funded by the CIA, the mujahideen mercenaries now took
on a life of their own. Hundreds of them returned home to Algeria, Chechnya,
Kosovo, and Kashmir to carry on terrorist attacks in Allah's name against
the purveyors of secular "corruption."

 

In Afghanistan itself,  by 1995 an extremist strain of Sunni Islam called
the Taliban---heavily funded and advised by the ISI and the CIA and with the
support of Islamic political parties in Pakistan---fought its way to power,
taking over most of the country, luring many tribal chiefs into its fold
with threats and bribes.

 

The Taliban promised to end the factional fighting and banditry that was the
mujahideen trademark. Suspected murderers and spies were executed monthly in
the sports stadium, and those accused of thievery had the offending hand
sliced off.  The Taliban condemned forms of "immorality" that included
premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality. They also outlawed all music,
theater, libraries, literature, secular education, and much scientific
research.

 

The Taliban unleashed a religious reign of terror, imposing an even stricter
interpretation of Muslim law than used by most of the Kabul clergy. All men
were required to wear untrimmed beards and women had to wear the burqa which
covered them from head to toe, including their faces. Persons who were slow
to comply were dealt swift and severe punishment by the Ministry of Virtue.
A woman who fled an abusive home or charged spousal abuse would herself be
severely whipped by the theocratic authorities. Women were outlawed from
social life, deprived of most forms of medical care, barred from all levels
of education, and any opportunity to work outside the home. Women who were
deemed "immoral" were stoned to death or buried alive.

 

None of this was of much concern to leaders in Washington who got along
famously with the Taliban. As recently as 1999, the US government was paying
the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official. Not
until October 2001, when President George W. Bush had to rally public
opinion behind his bombing campaign in Afghanistan did he denounce the
Taliban's oppression of women. His wife, Laura Bush, emerged overnight as a
full-blown feminist to deliver a public address detailing some of the abuses
committed against Afghan women.

 

If anything positive can be said about the Taliban, it is that they did put
a stop to much of the looting, raping, and random killings that the
mujahideen had practiced on a regular basis. In 2000 Taliban authorities
also eradicated the cultivation of opium poppy throughout the areas under
their control, an effort judged by the  United Nations International Drug
Control Program to have been nearly totally successful. With the Taliban
overthrown and a Western-selected mujahideen government reinstalled in Kabul
by December 2001, opium poppy production in Afghanistan increased
dramatically.

 

The years of war that have followed have taken tens of thousands of Afghani
lives. Along with those killed by Cruise missiles, Stealth bombers,
Tomahawks, daisy cutters, and land mines are those who continue to die of
hunger, cold, lack of shelter, and lack of water.

 

The Holy Crusade for Oil and Gas

 

While claiming to be fighting terrorism, US leaders have found other
compelling but less advertised reasons for plunging deeper into Afghanistan.
The Central Asian region is rich in oil and gas reserves. A decade before
9/11, Time magazine (18 March 1991) reported that US policy elites were
contemplating a military presence in Central Asia. The discovery of vast oil
and gas reserves in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan provided the lure, while the
dissolution of the USSR removed the one major barrier against pursuing an
aggressive interventionist policy in that part of the world.

 

US oil companies acquired the rights to some 75 percent of these new
reserves. A major problem was how to transport the oil and gas from the
landlocked region. US officials opposed using the Russian pipeline or the
most direct route across Iran to the Persian Gulf. Instead, they and the
corporate oil contractors explored a number of alternative pipeline routes,
across Azerbaijan and Turkey to the Mediterranean or across China to the
Pacific.

 

The route favored by Unocal, a US based oil company, crossed Afghanistan and
Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. The intensive negotiations that Unocal entered
into with the Taliban regime remained unresolved by 1998, as an Argentine
company placed a competing bid for the pipeline. Bush's war against the
Taliban rekindled UNOCAL's hopes for getting a major piece of the action.

 

Interestingly enough, neither the Clinton nor Bush administrations ever
placed Afghanistan on the official State Department list of states charged
with sponsoring terrorism, despite the acknowledged presence of Osama bin
Laden as a guest of the Taliban government.  Such a "rogue state"
designation would have made it impossible for a US oil or construction
company to enter an agreement with Kabul for a pipeline to the Central Asian
oil and gas fields.

 

In sum, well in advance of the 9/11 attacks the US government had made
preparations to move against the Taliban and create a compliant regime in
Kabul and a direct US military presence in Central Asia. The 9/11 attacks
provided the perfect impetus, stampeding US public opinion and reluctant
allies into supporting military intervention.

 

One might agree with John Ryan who argued that if Washington had left the
Marxist Taraki government alone back in 1979, "there would have been no army
of mujahideen, no Soviet intervention, no war that destroyed Afghanistan, no
Osama bin Laden, and no September 11 tragedy." But it would be asking too
much for Washington to leave unmolested a progressive leftist government
that was organizing the social capital around collective public needs rather
than private accumulation.

 

US intervention in Afghanistan has proven not much different from US
intervention in Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada,
Panama, and elsewhere. It had the same intent of preventing egalitarian
social change, and the same effect of overthrowing an economically reformist
government. In all these instances, the intervention brought retrograde
elements into ascendance, left the economy in ruins, and pitilessly laid
waste to many innocent lives.

 

The war against Afghanistan, a battered impoverished country, continues to
be portrayed in US official circles as a gallant crusade against terrorism.
If it ever was that, it also has been a means to other things: destroying a
leftist revolutionary social order, gaining profitable control of the last
vast untapped reserve of the earth's dwindling fossil fuel resources, and
planting US bases and US military power into still another region of the
world.

 

In the face of all this Obama's call for "change" rings hollow.

 

 

Michael Parenti's recent books are Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti
Reader and the forthcoming God and His Demons. For further information,
visit www.michaelparenti.org.

 

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