Shola Jawid English Section

AAfghanistan: What has the occupation brought but death?

7 September 2009. A World to Win News Service. The German commanders located on a base in the northern Afghanistan province of Kunduz were watching live images taken from a U.S. aircraft. Projected on the wall, the pictures showed two hijacked petrol tankers stuck in the sand of a shallow river. Milling around the lorries, they could see about 120 dots, each indicating a person detected in the darkness by heat-sensing equipment. Earlier they had watched similar footage taken by an overflight of a U.S. B-1B bomber that had happened to be nearby and was sent to film the site. This time, they were seeing a live feed from an American fighter they had called in. The German commanders asked that the trucks be bombed. Two minutes later, each truck was hit by a 500-pound bomb and twin fireballs lit up the night. The black dotes vanished as the people died. Only a few dots indicating survivors were left to move away.

The German colonel in charge complained that the images were too grainy to see if the victims were carrying weapons or not, but that a telephone informant had assured them that everyone on the scene was a Taliban fighter. The Afghan Rights Monitor organisation, which interviewed 15 villagers, said that 60-70 of those killed were children and other civilians who had come to fill jerrycans with fuel from the stuck tankers. A Pajhwok Afghan News service reporter who interviewed survivors on 5 September wrote that all of the fighters had left the scene before the raid. But the media debate about the percentages of fighters versus civilians among the dead is irrelevant and immoral. The occupiers deliberately set out to commit a massacre. This wasn't even a combat situation.

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TheAfghan Maoists: "Do not take part in the puppet regime's presidential and local council elections!"

10 August 2009. A World to Win News Service. Following are excerpts from a July leaflet by the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan.

Dear people of our country!

As you know the second round of the puppet regime's presidential election and local council elections will be held in late August. The reactionary-imperialist show has already started. We call on all of you: Do not take part in the puppet regime's presidential and the local council's elections!

We issue this call because:

First of all: Many people believe that participation in this election will be even less than last time, and that only a very small minority of the population will vote. Our people have the right to react to the upcoming elections with indifference. They experienced the results of previous elections: more murdering bombardments, the deepening and spreading of the regime's corruption, homelessness, unemployment, poverty and hunger among the toilers...

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occupiers' goals in the upcoming Afghanistan elections

10 August 2009. A World to Win News Service. Another round of presidential and local council elections in Afghanistan will be held 20 August. There have been dozens of candidates for president, but very few could conceivably even make a good showing. These elections have been hyped by the mainstream media around the world. The occupiers are doing their best to make as many people vote as possible. One of their main goals is to show that they have successfully exported their democracy to Afghanistan and in this way buy legitimacy for the regime they appointed.

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Open Protest Letter from the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan
To
The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
(With Copies to the Participating Parties and Organizations of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement)

The Nepalese Armed Lackeys, a Contingent of Occupying Forces in Afghanistan

The presence of Nepalese armed lackeys was seen in Afghanistan almost simultaneously when the American private security companies appeared in Afghanistan. Since then the issue has been reported in Shola Jawaid, central organ of our party, several times. The new government of Nepal that is lead by the Communist Party of Nepal (M) was expected to pay serious attention; take decisive measures in deploying Nepalese armed lackeys out from Afghanistan. Unfortunately, despite abolishing the Monarchy no measure is taken so far - in fact, the presence of Nepalese armed lackeys is more vividly spreading. The number of these forces stationed only at an important airport of country (Shindand Airport in Herat Province) was estimated to be 700. Groups of armed Nepalese now are seen at Kandahar Airport in Kandahar Province, at PRT(1) headquarter in Ghazni Province and some areas that are critical from security point of view in Kabul and other places. The number of Nepalese armed lackeys is estimated 1500 - 2000.

We recently learned - from other sources in RIM, not from the CPN(M) - that the new government of Nepal has agreed to contribute armed contingents to the “peacekeeping missions” of the UN. It is not known yet if the increase of Nepalese armed lackeys in Afghanistan is the outcome of this agreement. However, two issues are obvious:

The new government of Nepal and all its constituents – including its leading body the CPN (M) –not only have not opposed the presence of Nepalese armed lackeys in Afghanistan, but they have tolerated further expansion of these forces and practically have allowed it to happen.

Under the previous government of Nepal, Nepalese armed forces in Afghanistan worked only with the American private security companies. Now, in Shindand Airport they are under the direct command of the US “Special Forces”. In Kandahar, they “work” with Canadian forces, at PRT headquarter in Ghazni they are associated with Polish forces, in Kabul and other regions they are linked with the American private security companies. They are not stationed in a specific location for a specific “mission”; rather they are moved from place to place, hired to render various “tasks”.

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Afghanistan seven years after the invasion
Part I: The state of the occupation

3 November 2008. A World to Win News Service. This is the first of a three-part series on the occasion of the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. A second article, taken from Sholeh Jawid, the organ of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan, will examine the situation of the Taleban and other Islamic fundamentalists. A third will examine the U.S.'s strategic alternatives and perspectives. These articles will not run consecutively.

Within two months after they invaded Afghanistan, the U.S.-led coalition forces ousted the Taleban from power and declared victory. But the war wasn't over. In fact, now even American military authorities admit that the war's end is receding further and further from sight.

After seven years of occupation, the military and political situation in Afghanistan has become critical. The occupiers are making every effort to ease the situation and reverse the tide that has been running against them. Their methods include building up their troop strength, obliging their occupation partners to join the fighting in the war zones, and murdering civilians (including many children) in aerial attacks on an unprecedented scale. On the other side, the Taleban and other fundamentalists are taking advantage of the chaos and misery created by the occupiers and the puppet regime. They are advancing their war and imposing their medieval theocratic dictates over more of the country and its people, although they do not have stable areas of political power.

What the invasion brought Afghanistan

This war launched with the pretexts of a "war on terror" and "freeing the people of Afghanistan" was in fact a war of aggression aimed at serving the interests of the U.S. and the other imperialists, regional interests given greater importance by their global context. But the achievement of the war's aims has run up against obstacles arising from its unjust and reactionary nature. This is something that the arrogant imperialists could not and did not want to foresee. All the various imperialist countries, whether ruled by open right-wing regimes or social democratic governments, obeyed only one logic: the interests of monopoly capital and imperialist power relations. They took advantage of 9/11 and the anti-woman brutality of the Taleban regime to legitimise their invasion of Afghanistan. They never doubted that victory would come quickly and easily.

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Afghanistan: Death or just 20 years for blasphemy?

3 November 2008. A World to Win News Service. Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh is a 24-year-old Afghan university journalism student accused of showing classmates a downloaded article critical of Islam. Last October, a local court in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif sentenced him to death for blasphemy. Now a three-judge appeals court has confirmed this conviction, while reducing his sentence to 20 years in prison.

The original trial lasted four minutes. This new one was more complex. A key witness said that he had previously testified that Kambakhsh had given him the article only because the police threatened his parents. Evidence was also presented that Kambakhsh's admission of guilt had been extracted through torture. It could be considered outrageous that his conviction was upheld anyway, despite these revelations, but it should be considered far more outrageous that the latest trial examined only the evidence as to whether or not blasphemy was actually committed – whether or not Kambakhsh actively distributed the article, wrote it or agreed with it, and believes in Allah – and not whether or not blasphemy should be considered a crime. This is particularly disturbing in terms of the basis for the next step, an appeal to the Afghan Supreme Court in Kabul.

An Asia Human Rights Watch official said that the reduction of Kambakhsh's sentence to 20 years might actually work against him, in that it may reduce international pressure on Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai to step in quickly and pardon the student to save his life.

This is the Islamic justice that the U.S. occupation has maintained. Under Article 3 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, "No law can be contrary to the belief and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam." The country's Ulema (council of religious scholars), the upper House of Parliament and the head of the Senate, a key Karzai ally, have urged the student's execution. Karzai has remained publicly non-committal.

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Afghanistan: Protests against U.S. airstrikes and home evictions

14 July 2008. A World to Win News Service. Two notable protests against the occupiers and the Afghan authorities were reported in June. The security forces confronted them brutally, leaving at least one dead and dozens injured.

On 14 June, according to the BBC Persian service, thousands of residents of the south-eastern province of Paktia demonstrated against attacks on civilians by Afghan and foreign forces. Witnesses said that the protests continued for three days. BBC reported that at least 18 members of an extended family had been killed in an air strike. One protester also said that 11 members of another family were killed during a previous air attack in Zarmat district in Paktia province, in central-eastern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan. The districts of Zarmat and Mateh Khan were targeted for three consecutive nights. The bombardment was so heavy that people had to leave the bodies of their many loved ones untouched for several days.

During the protests, outraged people chanted slogans against the invaders and warned the government and the occupiers that if this situation continues, they will react and then nothing can prevent them from rising up and taking revenge. Although the demonstrations started peacefully, they turned bloody when the police fired on the protesters, killing at least one and wounding 12 more.

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Book/film review: The Kite Runner

23 June 2008. A World to Win News Service. The Kite Runner, a novel by the Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini, has proved to be one of the world’s most popular works of fiction since it was first published in 2003. It was a bestseller in the U.S for several years, reaching many millions of people, and later was published in about 50 other countries in most major languages. Readers from Iceland to Brazil and from China to Iran, and of course many Afghans, have written to the author to describe their heart-wrenching experience in reading the book and the effect it has had on their perceptions of the world (see khaledhosseini.com). A film made from the book was released in 2007, the same year as the publication of the author’s second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, also slated to become a film. The following review is by a reader from Afghanistan.

The story

A young boy grows up without a mother (Amir). His father is busy being a man among men (Baba). Unknown to Amir, his servant and best friend (Hassan), is also his half brother. The three live in an affluent neighbourhood of Kabul (Wazir Akbar Khan) in the 1970s, during the last years of King Zahir’s reign, a period of calm before the storm. But this well-off, seemingly perfect household is deeply scarred.

Amir’s mother died while giving birth to him. Growing up in a culture full of guilt trips, in his subconscious Amir feels guilty about his mother’s death. Baba, suffering from the loss of his beloved wife, a university professor, lives a lonely life. He is caught in the grips of his social role as a man and patriarch. He struggles to keep his image as a successful businessman. But it is Hassan who bears the brunt of all.

Hassan was born to the family maid whom Baba slept with after his wife died. His mother, who fled the household soon after he was born, belonged to an oppressed nationality, the Hazara, historically discriminated against. Hassan is considered harami (a “bastard”) according to Islamic law. He lives in the property’s servant quarters with his stepfather, who, like him, serves Baba and Amir. To top it all, Hassan is born with a cleft lip that adds further burdens to his childhood.

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Interview with Afghanistan Maoist Leader

Afghanistan: Protest against US occupiers in Jalalabad

Canadian Revolutionary Congress held

Message to the Founding Congress of Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada

Cluster bombs: Israel’s continuing war on Lebanese civilians

Ayatollah Benedict attacks Islam and reason

Afghanistan? a changing situation

Anti-US riots shake Kabul

Afghanistan Maoists on the clashes between Sunnis and Shiites in Herat

The future of Nepal’s king – “Either exile or trial before a people's court”

The anti-Islam cartoons controversy – not about “freedom of speech”