The Afghan War 

by Matt Siegfried

The September 11th attacks on the United States and the American response to them have opened a new round of uncertainty and conflict in the world. Nearly all of the thousands who have died in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the American war on Afghanistan are the poor, workers, civilians, and the innocent. Almost 25% of those who died in the World Trade Centre were in trade unions including those who worked at the Windows on the World restaurant in the Twin Towers. This was the largest unionised restaurant in the country and had workers from every corner of the world. All who went to work at the restaurant that day are now dead. In Afghanistan the crisis and level of destruction is much greater. Millions face starvation, cold, disease and American bombs as well as the chaos of the civil war that has been used as a proxy battle by many of the countries of that region and beyond. Thousands died in the US, millions have died over the last 20 years in Afghanistan and millions more are in peril.

In the United States itself the attacks on New York have had a similar effect as the bombing of Omagh in Ireland had. While, unlike Omagh, the intention of the attacks on New York were to kill large numbers of civilians, the consequences of the attacks have been to deligitimize all political struggle. It has greatly strengthened the agenda of the far-right in its attacks on immigrants and civil liberties and to isolate the left at a moment when it was making gains internationally in the struggle against capitalist globalisation and the movement in solidarity with those in the Middle East, especially the Palestinians, fighting for their liberation. Like Omagh, the attacks have set back any professed political agenda the perpetrators had and allowed Bush to declare to the world - "Your are either with us or you are with the terrorists"- setting up for all of those in conflict with US imperialism to be labelled terrorists and potential targets of the American "War on Terrorism".

The US war on Afghanistan is only the current manifestation of America's destructive role in the region. For more than a decade the United States fought a proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The US supplied, trained and organized some of the most reactionary forces in the region, including those who became the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, in their war with the former Soviet Union. The country was left in ruins without the ability to support even the most basic elements of a state.

In the aftermath of that war a civil war between various factions of the "victors" in the battle against the Soviets began. Many of the regional powers supporting different sides, often at the same time, in that ruined land. And now the United States, the richest and most powerful country in the world, with the language of the bully and the arrogance of the imperialist, is engaged in a war that could potentially lead to the deaths of millions in Afghanistan as winter approaches and the distribution of urgently needed aid is made impossible by American bombs. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees warns that up to 7,000,000 people are at risk of starvation and disease this winter, the US drops 35,000 single meals a day in Afghanistan. US aid may be propaganda, but the terror of their bombing is real.

The war has also unleashed the possibility of a wider war or a series or wars involving not just the countries of the Middle East and Central Asia, but of the Indian Sub-Continent and the broader Moslem world. Instead of addressing the causes of the desperation that lead those who attacked the World Trade Centre, the US and its allies have embarked on campaign guaranteed to put the lives of innocent civilians in their own countries further at risk. The coalition the United States has put together to fight this war is no stranger to terrorism. They decry it when it is aimed at them, but they applaud it when it is directed at their enemies. In the language of its adversary the US invokes the language of a crusade. Too arrogant to understand irony and too powerful to be disturbed by its own hypocrisy the US seeks a military solution to the disastrous results of its own policies. It is the urgent task of progressives around the world to build a movement to stop the American and British war on Afghanistan.

Within that movement revolutionaries should fight for the reversal of American foreign policy in the region and, indeed, around the world that has led to the injustices motivating many into the hands of the fundamentalist Islamic reactionaries.

As long as imperialism remains war is certain. Against their shortsighted and bloody-minded motivation those who struggle for national and human liberation should build upon the movement against capitalist globalisation that has swept the world in recent years. The US coalition is built on the foundations of terror, we must counter with our own foundation- that of the deepest human solidarity.

A generation ago young people in the United States helped put an end to another imperialist war. It may be difficult, but it is essential that we openly and loudly oppose this adventure and announce our sympathies with all those who are victims, directly or indirectly, of the consequences of this war. There can be no peace without justice. There can be no peace without freedom. Not the "Infinite Justice" or "Enduring Freedom" of the imperialists but for all of those denied real justice and freedom at their hands is the greatest way to insure peace.