By Deirdre Griswold
October 17, 2012
The horrible, near-fatal shooting of a young Pakistani schoolgirl,
reportedly by members of the Taliban, has focused world attention on the
conflict between the armed Islamic group and Pakistani advocates of education
for women. Malala Yousafzai, 14 years old, was shot in the head and neck while
on a school bus, according to her classmates. She has been flown to Britain to
receive medical attention for severe damage to her skull.
The daughter of a teacher, Yousafzai has been an outspoken advocate of
schooling for girls since she was only 11, producing a blog and giving many
interviews. She has gained worldwide attention and praise, especially from
Western politicians and public figures. This is reportedly why she was singled
out for attack.
Her family lives in the Swat valley area of Pakistan, a beautiful
mountainous area that attracts many tourists. However, most of the people
living there are very poor. Many sympathize with the Taliban, which has been
resisting foreign intervention in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Until very recently, the Swat valley had a higher rate of literacy than the
rest of Pakistan and there were many schools for girls. What has happened there
to strengthen the influence of the Taliban, which takes an extremely
reactionary position on women’s rights?
Factors behind Taliban’s influence
The poor people of the Swat valley in particular have suffered greatly in
recent years.
In 2009, the Pentagon, fighting a full-scale war against the Taliban in
neighboring Afghanistan, pushed the Pakistani Army to carry out an offensive
against the Taliban in the Swat valley that resulted in the displacement of 2
million residents. Many wealthy Pakistanis moved out of the valley temporarily
while the fighting was going on, leaving the poor to suffer the brunt of it.
(Guardian, May 11, 2011)
Farmers in the valley were among the 3.5 million Pakistanis who had already
been made homeless by a disastrous earthquake in 2005.
Then, in 2010, the worst floods in history swept through the river valleys
of the northwest, causing more than a thousand deaths and widespread
homelessness. The pain of those suffering turned to anger when government
assistance failed to arrive.
“The anger of the flood victims poses a danger to the already
struggling government, now competing with Islamist movements to deliver aid in
a region with strong Taliban influence,” CBS News reported on Aug. 3,
2010. Thus, even after being targeted by a major military campaign just a year
earlier, the Taliban were strong enough to provide assistance to flood victims
who had received nothing from the government, thus earning them greater
popularity.
Meanwhile, the U.S. had begun targeting the valley for its drone attacks on
suspected members of the Taliban. The pilotless planes carried out devastating
missile strikes on what often turned out to be family gatherings —
weddings, birthday celebrations — killing children, women and men.
All these factors — the natural disasters, the U.S. war in Afghanistan
and its impact on Pakistan, the government corruption that is so glaring when
citizens are homeless and starving while relief funds fail to materialize
— have combined to actually strengthen the political influence of a
movement that is socially reactionary but is also self-sacrificing and
relentless in its resistance to foreign domination.
'Stop imperialist intervention’
The Pakistani bourgeoisie and military have long been important allies of
U.S.-Anglo imperialism. For decades during the Cold War, the military ruled
Pakistan outright, receiving billions of dollars in U.S. aid while crushing any
opposition, especially from the left and the working class.
In neighboring Afghanistan, however, a leftist revolution in 1978 brought to
power a secular, democratic government that attempted to institute land reform,
canceled the debts of the peasants, and championed women’s rights, ending
the bride-price and opening up schools and medical care to all. One of its
leaders was Anahita Ratebzad, a Marxist and founder of the Democratic
Organization of Women of Afghanistan.
After the revolution, women became 70 percent of the teachers, 50 percent of
the civil servants and 40 percent of the doctors in Kabul. (Journal of the
American Medical Association, 1998)
What happened to this great achievement for women? The Carter
administration, reeling from the revolution in Iran that toppled the
Western-backed Shah and also closed a strategic U.S. base there, began looking
for other countries in the region from which to launch its high-altitude spy
planes over the Soviet Union. It settled on Afghanistan. The CIA spent billions
of dollars pulling together a counter-revolutionary army that launched a
clandestine war against the progressive regime, which then had to turn to the
Soviets for support.
In the long war that followed, the U.S. bankrolled, armed and trained the
most reactionary, anti-woman, pro-landlord forces in Afghanistan in order to
bring down the leftist government, overturn its many reforms and use the
country as a military base in the region.
Among those on the CIA’s payroll were Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
No one disputes this.
It is not the imperialist West that is going to rescue young women like
Malala Yousafzai from oppression. And it is not Islam, even in its
fundamentalist form, that is responsible for her shooting.
Neighboring Iran, an Islamic state, today has the highest female-to-male
ratio of primary school students in the world, according to UNESCO. And women
make up more than 60 percent of Iran’s university students. Yet it is
under Western sanctions and war threats because of the popular 1979 revolution
that broke the neocolonial grip of U.S. and British oil companies.
To support the women of Pakistan and Afghanistan, we must demand: U.S. out!
No war, no drone attacks — stop imperialist intervention! n
