Afghanistan: Deep cracks in the Karzai regime
25 February 2008. A World to Win News Service. As the Afghanistan Parliament’s Economics Commission was visiting a sugar factory in the northern province of Baghlan in November 2007, a big explosion killed at least 75 people according to government figures, including six commission members and about 69 local teachers and students. An article in issue no. 18 of Shola Jawid, the organ of Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan, analysed this incident and the contradictions behind it. Following are excerpts.
Five days after the incident, the exact number of the dead is not yet known. The latest unofficial estimate puts the number of people killed at 75 people, among them 69 students and teachers and six members of the Velsi Jirga (Afghanistan's parliament). It is said that anxious to bury their dead, relatives removed some of the bodies from the explosion scene before they were counted. According to some rumours, more than a hundred people were killed and another 200 wounded.
At first the authorities claimed it was a suicide attack, but after a few days this claim was dropped. Now they say the incident must be investigated. The government has formed a special commission for that purpose. But citing the failure of similar government commissions, the Velsi Jirga has formed its own commission to investigate the incident. In addition the Parliament has demanded that the Baghlan senior security officials be sacked and placed under investigation.
Most of the dead and wounded were hit in the feet or legs. That means the explosives must have been planted on the ground or in the earth. In other words, they were placed beforehand, with precise information about the visit and its timing. This could have been possible only through connections inside the government or Parliament.
The incident happened when a delegation of senior officials went to take part in the inauguration of the sugar factory in Central Baghlan City, set to be reopened after privatisation and reconstruction. Several state-owned factories and mines in the province, including the cement factory, sugar factory and coalmines, had been privatised in the previous few months. There had been intense conflicts among government officials about how these privatisations were to be carried out, especially between the Ministry of Mining and Industry and the parliamentary economics commission. The commission had already summoned the minister to appear before it for questioning. The commission’s visit to Baghlan was intended to pursue this conflict over privatisation.
At this time there are many active, semi-active and even inactive production units all over Afghanistan that in the name of privatisation are being plundered and handed over for almost nothing to companies whose capital comes from the occupying imperialist powers and high government officials. There is no doubt that commissions amounting to several million dollars are being paid to the government bodies and brokers involved. Nonetheless, the privatising governmental-owned productive institutions is still going on and will continue in the future.
In fact, because this privatisation represents a process of broad and extensive plunder of productive institutions and state-owned lands it has caused sharp financial contention among the different factions of the puppet regime. This financial contention has given rise to wide-ranging political contention among them too. The U.S. and UK imperialists and their allies militarily present in Afghanistan have been directly involved in this, as well as in contentions over control of drug smuggling. Through the channels they have established, the Russian imperialists and other regional reactionary powers such as China, India and the Islamic Republic of Iran are also directly or indirectly involved.
For example, Seyed Mostafa Kazemi, the head of the Velsi Jirga financial commission killed in the Baghlan explosion, was the spokesman for the United Front and head of the Eghtedare Meli (National Power) Party. This United Front was considered the main legal opposition faction within Karzai's puppet regime. He was one of the main figures of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards faction, the Shia fundamentalist organisation in Afghanistan most closely allied with the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was the vice president of the central council of the Hezbe Vahdat-e-Islami (Islamic Unity Party) at the time of its formation. (The Islamic Revolutionary Guards faction split from the Islamic Unity Party in the 1990s.) After the imperialist forces occupied Afghanistan and set up the puppet Karzai regime, Kazemi was appointed the Minister of Trade. He completed his higher education in sociology and his political training in Iran, under the supervision of its Islamic regime, so he was considered one of the most important figures related to the Iranian regime.
This United Front has gathered people related to the Khalq and Parcham parties (pro-Soviet parties who held political power during the Soviet invasion), people close to the former monarch Zahir Shah, and jihadis related to Russian imperialists or the Islamic Republic of Iran. When this United Front was formed, Karzai publicly complained that certain foreign embassies in Kabul played a role in organizing it. He clearly was pointing a finger at the embassies of Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Who was behind the explosion?
The Taleban spokesman, on the same day the explosion happened, announced that they had no role in it. The Islamic Party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar neither accepted nor denied responsibility. It is believed that this party has shared little in the armed resistance against the occupiers and the puppet regime. However if this party had carried out this operation, it is very unlikely that they would not have taken responsibility, as they consider such operations to their advantage.
Some say that the Taleban and the Islamic Party have avoided accepting responsibility because of the high number of dead and wounded. However this is also very unlikely since both forces have never hesitated in the past to carry out and take responsibility for operations that caused a huge loss of civilian lives.
After the incidence, Baghlan province officials arrested four people. Three of them were released after a short while. They kept only one mullah of a mosque in custody, and sent him to the Interior Ministry for more investigation.
The imperialist occupation forces and their officials also barely reacted, indicating that they gave little importance to the incident. This is in contrast to their past behaviour, when in reaction to less important incidents and fewer civilian deaths they flooded the Karzai government with messages of sympathy.
There have been complaints from several members of the Velsi Jirga, who said that since President Karzai ignores the parliament’s decisions, Jirga members must resign and dissolve the parliament. This is an indication of the intense confrontation among the regime factions. But the Baghlan incident could mean that the contention between the government and the legal opposition is taking on new and dangerous dimensions. In the past few years since the establishment of the new puppet regime, a Borders minister, a Mining and Industry minister and two Tourism ministers have been killed, victims of the factional contention within the puppet regime. Also two members of Velsi Jirga have been killed as a result of internal regime squabbles.
If the regime and occupation officials intend to cover up the questions about the Baghlan bombing, as they have with previous similar incidents, in order to prevent the intensification of conflict within the regime, they may quietly halt the work of the investigating bodies, or those bodies may conclude their work without clear results. But it seems that things will go differently this time, because the regime’s situation in general is worse than before and the inflicted blow is so huge. This is why the Velsi Jirga established its own independent investigation commission, which makes it harder for the government to ignore or downplay the results of the investigation.
If we look at the regional situation, we see that the situation is becoming extremely complicated and intense in relation to both Iran and Pakistan. It is very likely that the contention among the different factions of the puppet regime will become increasingly sharp. It is very possible that the investigation commissions of the government and the parliament may reach contradictory conclusions that in turn would give rise to more tension between the government and the Velsi Jirga.
In any case, the Baghlan incidence has disgraced and exposed more than before the whole comical show of the democracy games being played by the imperialist occupiers. It also clearly shows that they have not been able to achieve their stated goal of establishing and consolidating a state with its triple pillars. Their puppet regime is truly pathetic, an embarrassment to them in the region and the world.
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