20 years of imperialist war and intervention, which led to about 250 000 deaths, have ended in a humiliating defeat for the US and its international allies. In spite of all the demagogy, neither democracy nor freedom were part of the supplies brought by the western powers to this martyred nation. On the contrary, the billions of dollars poured into this intervention have enriched the industrial military complex and a corrupted elite of afghani politicians who have run away with the loot, leading to the complete collapse of the country and plunging the living conditions of the people into the abyss.
The supposed war against terrorism has only served to raze Afghanistan, in the same way and at the same time that it has devastated Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lybia. The Frankenstein monster that is islamic fundamentalism, and that all of the US governments, from Carter to Reagan, have fed in their struggle against the Soviet bloc, has come home to roost.
The fall of Kabul, after a fortnightly lightning offensive following the exit of the US army exit, has brought the taliban back into power. It could be assumed to be only an episodic defeat or a circumstancial event. But it is nothing like that. The humiliating defeat of the imperialist forces is not only a tremendous setback for the Biden administration and its former incumbent Donald Trump, but it is proof of the irreversible character of us decadence the deep change in the power relationships in international relations which during this epoch of organic crisis for capitalism.
The North American empire has not stopped reaping failure after failure. All their bets have lost. They lost in Iraq, lost in Syria, lost against Iran and its plans for Palestine have been a complete mess.
But with this failed strategy, which is shared by the European bourgeoisie, they have left an unprecedented trail of destruction and barbarism..
The people, the women, the youth and the oppressed of Afghanistan are facing a new round in a catastrophe that has lasted for decades. They cannot expect anything from the so-called “international community”. That group of criminals which lean themselves in the legality of the UN and capitalist institutions are the main architects of this suffering.
Western militaristic barbarism has consciously sowed the taliban nightmare. Only the international working class and combative youth can offer the solidarity which the Afghani people need right now, and that means to raise a mass movement of anti-imperialist protest, with a working-class and socialist programme.
Disintegration of a puppet government
On Sunday, the 15th of August, the Afghani president, Ashraf Ghani, left the country to avoid being captured by the Taliban, who already ruled over Kabul. The escape of this multimillionaire sepoy perfectly reflects the character of his government. But it is obvious that his survival instinct had deepened in the last few days. Ghani did not believe in the CIA reports forecasting it would take about three months for the Taliban to take Kabul. He preferred to avoid the situation that thousands of functionaries of his regime and hundreds of staff and consultants for western embassies are in, waiting to be evacuated in the midst of chaos.
This Dantean scenario, described in real time by the media, is happening a month after Joe Biden proclaimed that: “The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army... There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. (speech on the 8th of July (1)). But the images reaching us from Kabul are exactly what imperialism wanted to avoid: people on the roof of the embassy being airlifted by helicopter, as it happened in Saigon, 1975, whilst smoke columns of hastily burnt documents rise to the sky.
Kabul airport, the last possible exit route from the country, is a metaphor of what imperialism can currently offer. Commercial flights have been suspended and only US military flights are allowed, until their evacuation plans are completed. After that, it is the turn of the europeans. Meanwhile, hundreds of afghanis converge on the tarmac- at least 5 have died shot by US marines, adding to the deaths of desperate people that cling to the plane with all their forces and fall down, hitting the asphalt.
The taliban have taken all the country’s provincial capitals without resistance, in a bit more than two weeks. How is this possible? The Biden administration has never stopped praising the capabilities of the Afghan army, its 300 000 members, its weaponry and training… But this collapse shows that the imperialist propaganda was, as in many other occasions, nothing more than lies and fiction.
After the US victory against the taliban in 2001, imperialism rehabilitated the old warlords, supported by them in the 80s to fight against the Soviets, and who fought themselves afterwards in a civil war that lasted from 1989 to 1996. In these twenty years, the successive US administrations have earmarked at least 1 billion dollars to the Afghan war. Most of it covered the cost of its troops and, of course, the multi million contracts with the mercenary companies and the military industry multinationals. But the budget for the formation of Afghan “security forces”has swallowed at least 100 000 million dollars.
From those, thousands of millions have gone directly to the pockets of the warlords, whilst not one of the problems of the Afghani masses have been solved. Now that the government has fallen, the media is full of reports of “phantom battalions”, army units that did not exist but for whom the commanders got the battalion wages, as well as reports of lack of supplies and conditions of all types for the soldiers.
This is what is behind the collapse of the Afghan army- the soldiers were not willing to give their life for a bunch of mobsters. In the same way that the population, which does not sympathize with the taliban, has not moved a finger to defend Ghani’s puppet regime. This has been strikingly clear with Kabul. After two weeks speculating about the bloody battle to come, the capital has fallen without a single shot.
This defeat has not only revealed the rottenness of the Afghan regime, it is above all else a decisive milestone on the protracted decadence of the US capitalist regime, convulsed by an unprecedented social and political internal crisis, which has not stopped reaping setback after setback in its international policy from Latin America to the Middle East.
The evidence supporting what we are saying is in the speech that Joe Biden himself made in the White House on Monday, 16th of August (2): “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.I’m clear on my answer: I will not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past — the mistake of staying and fighting indefinitely in a conflict that is not in the national interest of the United States...Those are the mistakes we cannot continue to repeat, because we have significant vital interests in the world that we cannot afford to ignore...o I’m left again to ask of those who argue that we should stay: How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight How many more lives — American lives — is it worth?”
Words that accurately reflect the moral character of the american ruling class- Wasn’t the US administration who started the 2001 war in Afghanistan, by any chance? Weren’t the republican and democrat governments the ones who poured colossal resources into this intervention, when they thought they could do what they wanted after the collapse of stalinism in the USSR?
It is hard to resort to a more shameful method to wash one’s hands of responsibility, falsify history and blame the Afghan people for the imperialist crimes. This is from Joe Biden, a mediocre servant of Wall Street- who is presented as a role model by the international social-democracy and its fellow travellers in the new reformist left.
The role of China
The new scenario represents a turning point. It is the corollary of a process that has been brewing for the past decade and allowed China to raise itself as an economic, technological and military power that can face the old empire at the same level. The war in Afghanistan, and its result, are part of this new political landscape and present big opportunities for Beijing’s capitalist government to advance in a key territory for its hegemonic aspirations, at the same time as it presents new challenges full of uncertainty.
It is not secret that the chinese leaders have supported and encouraged the taliban forces, providing the utmost political cover to their leaders, which have been received with all the honors in the Chinese capital, contributing with military support through Iran and assuring foreign recognition and investment in exchange for the future integrist government to keep a reasonable internal stability and to not unleash a civil war.
Of course, future events are not going to be decided only by China, but Xi Jinping's regime has made clear that its foreign policy, which is nothing more than an extension of its internal policy, has nothing of communist or proletarian. Supporting the taliban is the opposite of marxism-leninism. It is pure and undistilled imperialist realpolitik.
China’s interest and approach in Afghanistan relies on two axis: to secure its interests in a country with a key geostrategic location and to exploit as much as possible the image of decadence and uselessness conveyed by US imperialism. Until now, in spite of the big chinese investment in the country, the Afghan government refused to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative. The US exit and the fall of the government have removed that obstacle.
But the situation that has opened in Afghanistan will not be a primrose path for Beijing. US imperialism military intervention made Washington responsible for the region. From now on, the stability sought by China will have to be secured by its own means and by the means of its partners- Russia, Pakistan and Iran, whose interests and aims do not always match.
The Chinese leaders have openly declared that they would prefer a coalition government with the participation of the taliban after the american exit. But the devastating collapse of the Afghan government opens a somewhat different path, with the taliban concentrating all power to a scale they did not attain in the past. On one hand, the prospect of a new civil war may be shelved, something that is still up in the air due to the conflicting imperialist interests. But on the other hand, the taliban have nothing to offer to a population that does not know them and does not want them.
The main question to China will be to what level its “economic diplomacy” and its collaboration with Pakistan, main sponsor of the taliban until now, can provide their sought-after stability, taking into account that the US and EU will not remain immobile in the medium term. Historical experience cruelly shows that a “scorched earth” policy is still an option.
Only the working-class can save the working-class
US imperialism has left Afghanistan defeated. This is true, but who is raising its head is the most fundamentalist and obscurantist reaction. We cannot forget that the taliban were a product of an operation put in place by US imperialism, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia both in the struggle against the Soviets and to attempt to tackle the chaos caused by the bloody war between the different warlords after Moscow’s retreat.
The taliban can only offer the Afghan people what they have already lived through between 1996 and 2001: unbridled oppression, slavery for women and a policy of agreements with imperialism which will benefit a privileged elite. We have seen it in the last few decades: islamic fundamentalist plays the same role as the fascist groupings, dismantles the revolutionary movements and allows capitalism to function unhindered.
The imperialists and the integrists are two sides of the same coin: they feed and need this epoch of world crisis, recession, pandemic and capitalist decomposition.
The ones which made the horrifying scenario in Afghanistan possible are the same who have done it before in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Yes, on one hand are the taliban, the Islamic State, all type of jihadi reactionary groupings… but behind them lie their sponsors- the Gulf reactionary monarchies, the Iran mullahs, and the imperialism that sows the conditions for their existence, when it doesn’t organise and strengthen them directly.
It is possible that we will see the taliban reaching agreements with China. But in the current capitalist China, which strives to overtake the US as the main world imperialist power, the Afghan masses, or any other country's masses, will not find a solution for their problems.
Imperialism has covered itself with the marks of crimes against the people of the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Now they indifferently watch the new tragedy of the Afghan people, and will waste no time in spreading their racist and xenophobic venom. France’s president has opened the joust. Macron, the representative of the financial oligarchy, spokesperson of the most disgraceful bourgeois morality, has put its head forward and promised… to protect the West of Afghan refugees!!: “We need to anticipate and protect ourselves from important irregular migratory flows”.
There is only one way to solve the chaos spread by capitalism from one country to another: the socialist revolution, the seizure of power by the working-class leading the oppressed masses, with a programme to defeat oligarchy and imperialism, that expropriates the main pillars of the economy and puts it under the democratic control of the population.
In this way we could start to face the catastrophe that a decisive part of humankind lives through, put an end to imperialist war and devastation, the permanent crisis in which millions of refugees deprived of everything live through, to the excluded children to whom all possibility of a future is taken from their hands, and to start creating the basis for a genuine rebuilding of society. There is no option, there is no exit under the capitalist order.
Socialism or barbarism!
