[Peace-discuss] Afghan history by Michael Parenti

[Brussel Morton K.]

The fact that I posted his article should have given you a hint  
before shooting from the hip. Parenti was much as you say, but my  
impression at the time was also of someone somewhat like a wild  
cannon (to use a related metaphor), whose shots sometimes went astray.

--mkb

On Nov 28, 2008, at 9:01 PM, LAURIE SOLOMON wrote:

> >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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