Democratic Palestine : 29 (ص 40)
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- Democratic Palestine : 29 (ص 40)
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Afghanistan
Opportunity for Peace
The Geneva accords have pulled the carpet out from under the
Reagan Administration’s «low-intensity warfare» as practiced
against Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. For the first time since the
1978 revolution, the Afghani government and people have obtained
international guarantees that they should be able to continue their
effort towards peace and progress without the threat of imperialist-
reactionary interference.
On April 14th, the foreign ministers
of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US and
the Soviet Union signed a set of accords
which Soviet Foreign Minister
Shevardnadze characterized as a
«political settlement of the situation
around Afghanistan» (International
Herald Tribune, April 15th). Signing
the first accord, Pakistan and
Afghanistan pledged non-interference
in each other’s internal affairs, to
«refrain from the promotion, en-
couragement or support, direct or in-
direct, of rebellious or secessionist ac-
tivities.» This was the lynchpin of the
accords, for it rules out the Pakistani-
US military aid to the Afghani contras.
In the second accord, the Soviet
Union and the US pledged to serve as
international guarantors of the agree-
ment. The third accord, signed by
Afghanistan and Pakistan, provides for
the resettlement of Afghani refugees
currently in Pakistan and Iran, in their
own country. The fourth accord con-
nects the first three and ties them to a
timetable for the Soviet troop
withdrawal which began May 15th and
will be completed within nine months.
IMPERIALISM’S SOUR
GRAPES
The US media in particular reacted to
these accords by predicting chaos in
Afghanistan, comparing the Soviet
withdrawal with the US defeat in Viet-
nam, and speculating about supposed
rifts between the Afghani and Soviet
leaderships. These imperialist
apologists are actually just reflecting
the Reagan Administration’s frustra-
tion. Costing over $2 billion over eight
years, the CIA’s operation against
Afghanistan is its biggest since Vietnam
and one of its biggest ever. The Reagan
Administration was counting it as a
40
great policy success. By aiding the
Afghani counterrevolutionaries, the US
could practice «low-intensity warfare»
to sap the energies of the progressive
government in Afghanistan and the
Soviet Union, without committing US
forces. In contrast to supporting the
contras against Nicaragua, the US’s
covert war on Afghanistan met with
almost no domestic opposition.
Nonetheless, the US was forced by a
combination of factors beyond its own
borders and control, to sign an inter-
national accord which makes its sup-
port to the Afghani contras illegal. The
real background for the accords is to be
found in three main factors:
1. The consolidation of the Afghani
revolution, especially with the success
of the national reconciliation policy in-
itiated in 1987, by Comrade Najiballah,
General Secretary of the People’s
Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA).
2. The Soviet determination to resolve
regional conflicts as part of is global
peace offensive.
3. The Afghani counterrevolutionary
forces’ chronic corruption, disunity
and unpopularity, even among Afghani
refugees in Pakistan; and the problems
this has created for the Pakistani
regime, despite its great desire to
sabotage the Afghani revolution.
There is also a form of thinly veiled
racism in the many predictions that the
Afghani regime will not be able to
manage in the absence of Soviet troops.
In this light, the comments of UN
Undersecretary-General Diego Cor-
dovez, who devoted six years to
mediating this accord, are interesting:
«We are being besieged by news
analyses that advance.the notion that
the Afghani people will be unable to
agree among themselves and conse-
quently will be plunged into renewed
civil war... I believe that those predic-
tions underestimate the Afghans, as
pundits so often have undérestimated
other peoples of the Third World» (In-
ternational Herald Tribune, May 9th).
CAUSE FOR HOPE
Based on the experience of the past
year and a half, there are many reasons
to believe that the Afghani government
can preside over a peaceful, democratic
resolution of the situation if foreign in-
tervention really ceases. In an interview
with The New Worker, April 29th,
Ahmad Sarwar, Charge d’Affaires at
the Afghani Embassy in London, re-
counted the steps achieved in national
reconciliation so far: «Since we an-
nounced the policy, over 200,000 peo-
ple have come back from abroad.
Thousands have laid down their arms
and come over to the government side.
More than 6,000 of our opponents have
joined the commissions for national
reconciliation, and are actively par-
ticipating in the creation of peace in
Afghanistan. Recently... two groups
who backed the rebels returned from
India and joined the government.
Thirteen of the thirty provinces have
been declared zones of peace and all
troops withdrawn from them.»
To meet the challenge of the new
situation, the government has proposed
negotiations to create a broad-based
coalition government, including the
rebel groups and the former shah
(king); 28 ministerial posts have been
offered to the opposition. In accor-
dance with the new constitution ratified
last year, parliamentary elections have
been held throughout the country - a
first in Afghanistan’s history - and
posts were kept open for the opposition
which has so far refused to participate.
Friends of the Afghani revolution
may legitimately ask themselves
whether these new moves might not be
seized upon by those who want to
retard Afghanistan’s advance towards
socialism. However, such questions
must be evaluated on the background
of objective conditions. In this connec-
tion, Ahmad Sarwar’s assessment pro-
vides a _ yardstick for evaluating
government policy: «We are at the
stage of feudality and pre-feudality in
Afghanistan. The party is not a com-
munist party, but a revolutionary par-
ty, and its aim was to democratise all
social and economic life in the country.
It is too soon for the party to be a - هو جزء من
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