Afghanistan: Drive the US Occupants Out!

US President Trump escalates the imperialist crusade against the Afghan people! Support the resistance against the occupiers and their stooges!

 

Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 23.08.2017, www.thecommunists.net

 

 

1.            In his first speech as commander-in-chief, US President Trump announced on 21 August a substantial increase of US troops in Afghanistan and an intensification of the military aggression against the Afghan people. Arrogant and crude as always, Donald Dumb announced: "We are not nation building again. We are killing terrorists." He added, ignoring the fact that the Afghan resistance against the US occupation is stronger than ever in this longest military conflict of the US: "In the end, we will win." (Reuters, 21 August 2017)

 

2.            Nearly 13,500 NATO troops are currently deployed in Afghanistan, 8,400 of them are Americans. They are supported by more than 25,000 contractors (of which 2/3 are foreigners). Together they are continuing the US-led occupation of the country which started in October 2001 in order to keep the pro-imperialist puppet government of Ashraf Ghani in power. According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, the war has cost the lives of about 25,000-30,000 Afghan civilians. Probably, the number is even higher. About 2,400 U.S. troops have died as well as an unknown number of Afghan resistance fighters. On 13 April this year, the American war mongers dropped, symbolic of their inhuman imperialist nihilism, the largest non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal – the so-called "Mother of All Bombs" – in the Nangarhar Province of eastern Afghanistan. This 16-year long war and occupation have devastated the country which was already one of the poorest in the world.

 

3.            While Trump gave no details about the concrete nature of the intensified US war top military personnel provided some information to the media. The US army plans to send additional 4,000 troops to aid the occupation forces against an ever-strengthening resistance. According to Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein, American bombers will intensify its strikes against the insurgents. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson indicated an escalation of US aggressiveness. She described Trump's decision as a "strategic correction" in the war effort and stated in an interview with the news agency Reuters: "I think the guidance was pretty clear from the president last night, and we're going to go on the offensive and destroy these terrorist networks." (Reuters, 22 August 2017)

 

4.            The main force of the Afghan resistance, the petty-bourgeois Islamist Taliban, spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said: "If America doesn't withdraw its troops from Afghanistan soon Afghanistan will become another graveyard for this superpower in the 21st century." Another Taliban commander added: "He is just wasting American soldiers. We know how to defend our country. It will not change anything." (Al-Jazeera, 22 August 2017) And a commander from the Taliban-allied Haqqani network told the AFP news agency that Trump's speech was proof of "a Crusade". (DAWN, 22 August 2017) In an "Open Letter" to Trump, issued on 15 August, the Taliban made clear that their insurgency is a national liberation war: "Everyone now understands that the main driver of war in Afghanistan is foreign occupation. (…) The Afghans have no ill-intention toward the Americans or any other nation around the world but if anyone violates their sanctums then they are mighty proficient at beating and defeating the transgressors." (Al-Jazeera, 15 August 2017)

 

5.            Reflecting the wide-spread opposition of the Afghan people against the US-led occupation, even a long-time ally of the US like former Afghan President Hamid Karzai publicly stated that he "very strongly" opposes the new US strategy, saying it was "against peace and the national interest of Afghanistan". (Al-Jazeera, 23 August 2017)

 

6.            The US President also issued in his speech various threats against Pakistan, a traditional close ally of China. "We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting," he said. He stated, arrogantly: "It is time for Pakistan to dedicate to civilization and order and peace." Leaving aside the irony of such words coming from the most illiterate and uncivilized US President history has ever seen, Trumps assertions are interesting as they represent another indication of the ongoing creation of an alliance of the US with India against the background of the accelerating rivalry between the US and China as well as between China and India (see the current stand-off between troops of these two power in the Sikkim border region). It is no accident that Trump also called in his speech for Pakistan's great rival India to play a bigger role in Afghanistan.

 

7.            Contrary to the wide-spread image in the capitalist media, the US-led occupation of Afghanistan has nothing to do with combating "terrorism". It has a geostrategic background and is part of the desperate attempt of US imperialism to keep its hegemonic role in world politics. Furthermore, Afghanistan is a strategically important country located at the interface between the Middle East and Asia in particular. Finally, Washington and its NATO allies like the British government are highly reluctant to accept defeat in their longest military conflict as they correctly fear that this would boost national resistance struggles all over the world – and in the Islamic world in particular. This is also the reason why all imperialist Great Powers – US, EU, Japan, Russia and China – support the occupation irrespective of their rivalry between each other.

 

8.            As Marxists and anti-imperialists, we unambiguously denounce the US occupation as a reactionary war of aggression. On the other hand, we characterize the resistance struggle of the Afghan people – which includes an armed guerilla struggle – as a legitimate war of defense which deserves the unconditional support of all consistent democrats, anti-imperialists and socialists all over the world. Therefore the RCIT has supported the Afghan resistance against the imperialist aggression from when the first US bombs were dropped on Kabul on 7 October 2001.

 

9.            Naturally, this does not minimize our political opposition against the reactionary program and ideology of the Taliban as the currently strongest force of the Afghan resistance. The task of Afghan socialists is to combine resistance against the occupation with an independent program fighting for a workers' and poor peasants' republic as part of a region-wide socialist federation.

 

10.          The RCIT strongly denounces the cowardly Stalinists, left-reformists and centrists who ignore the ongoing national liberation struggle in Afghanistan and who refuse to support the ongoing resistance against the occupation. This demonstrates once more that irrespective of their wordy opposition to "imperialism" in abstract, they fail in their anti-imperialist tasks in practice!

 

11.          The RCIT calls on socialists from around the world to fight against the imperialist crusade which the US Administration of Trump is waging against the Afghan people with the help of the British and other governments for 16 years. We call for an international campaign to support the struggle of the Afghan people to drive the imperialist occupiers out of their country!

 

 

 

International Secretariat of the RCIT

 

 

 

For our analysis and perspectives of the liberation struggle in Afghanistan, see, among others, the following documents:

 

Defend Afghanistan! Defeat Imperialism! October 2001, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/afghan-war-lrci-ft-ks/

 

Questions & Answers on the Afghan War, 30.09.2001, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/q-a-afghan-war-2001/

 

Stop the Invasion of Afghanistan! 30.09.2001, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/afghanistan-invasion-2001/

 

The History of Afghanistan (2001), https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/history-of-afghanistan/

 

Michael Pröbsting: Liberation Struggles and Imperialist Interference, Autumn 2012, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/liberation-struggle-and-imperialism/

 

Michael Pröbsting: The Great Robbery of the South. Continuity and Changes in the Super-Exploitation of the Semi-Colonial World by Monopoly Capital Consequences for the Marxist Theory of Imperialism, chapter 12 and 13, 2013, http://www.great-robbery-of-the-south.net/

 

On the acceleration of the rivalry between the imperialist Great Powers, you can find numerous documents here:

 

https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/china-russia-as-imperialist-powers/

 

See also Michael Pröbsting: The Great Robbery of the South

 

Our latest assessment of the Great Powers rivalry can be read viewed in:

 

RCIT: World Perspectives 2017: The Struggle against the Reactionary Offensive in the Era of Trumpism, 18 December 2016, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/world-perspectives-2017/;

 

On the current China-India border conflict and its background, see our latest pamphlet:

 

Michael Pröbsting: The China-India Conflict: Its Causes and Consequences. What are the background and the nature of the tensions between China and India in the Sikkim border region? What should be the tactical conclusions for Socialists and Activists of the Liberation Movements? 18 August 2017, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/china-india-rivalry/