Support the women of Afghanistan/ Stop the U.S. war!
How can we in the United States best help the women of Afghanistan? Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell tell us to support their ghastly bombing of this poor country because (1) they are trying to dislodge the Taliban from power and (2) the Taliban are oppressing women.
But (1) has nothing to do with (2). The Bush administration is not bombing the Taliban because they oppress women. It is bombing them because it now sees them as a threat to U.S. efforts to control the region's oil. If it succeeds in destroying the Taliban, it will replace them with others just as reactionary--and probably worse.
U.S. allies are all anti-woman
The U.S. is trying to cobble together a coalition to take the place of the Taliban. It is searching for puppets among those it began training and financing as early as 1979 to overthrow a socialist government in Kabul. These include the forces of the Northern Alliance, whose stand on women is no better than the Taliban. Also mentioned as a possible member of this coalition is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a right-wing rival of the Taliban who, as a student at Kabul University, threw acid in the face of a young woman for not being veiled.
There are no women among these potential "leaders" selected by the U.S. There are not even men who support women;s rights. The U.S. refuses to meet with any leftist Afghans--which means anyone the least bit progressive toward women. The truth is that those who direct U.S. foreign policy destroyed the only pro-woman government Afghanistan ever had. And they did it consciously, knowing full well the progress the socialists had carried out.
The Department of Defense publishes "country studies" on every nation in the world. The 1986 edition of "Afghanistan-- Country Study" admits that the 1978 revolution freed women, who had been considered the property of their father or husband. It ended the selling of brides, brought women out of seclusion, and tackled their 98% illiteracy rate by building schools, kindergartens and nurseries. It was socialists who founded the Democratic Women' Organization of Afghanistan in the 1960s. Most were later killed or driven into exile by the U.S.-led reactionaries.
But weren't U.S. motives benign? Wasn't it a war against a Soviet "invasion"?
No. Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbygniew Brzezinski admitted to the French paper Nouvel Observateur (Jan. 15-21, 1998) that President Carter signed a secret directive funding the CIA's war six months before the Soviet Union sent troops to Afghanistan to aid the besieged socialist regime.
A U.S. puppet regime is worse
Progress cannot come to Afghanistan on the bayonets of a U.S.-puppet regime. This war only deepens the suffering of all Afghans, women, children and men, by destroying their homes, wrecking their water supply, depriving them of food, and cruelly driving them out of their towns and villages just as winter begins.
To help the women of Afghanistan, we must do all we can to build the anti-war struggle here. A stronger anti-war, anti-imperialist movement in the U.S. will give heart to all who are fighting reaction, wherever they may be.
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