Lift the sanctions against Afghanistan!

By mid January the UN imposed once again sanctions against a “rogue state” in a joint effort of the US, the states of the European Union as well as Russia. This time it was the turn of Afghanistan allegedly to force the Taliban to extradite Osama bin Laden who has set up his head quarters there. This fresh Western attack follows the bombardment of Afghanistan by American cruise missiles two years ago. These aggressive moves are accompanied by the usual campaign against “Islamic fundamentalist terrorism” and for “human rights” especially shedding hypocritical tears for maltreated Afghan women thus legitimising the need for Western intervention.

It is clear form the very beginning that the sanctions will hit first of all the already starving and suffering population of this war-torn country. Twenty years of a destructive and devastating civil war, a severe draught and the terror of the medieval theocratic regime of the Taliban has already turned life of the popular Afghan masses into hell. More than three millions have fled the country and day by day thousands try to escape to the neighbouring countries. The sanctions on top of all this might cause another genocide of the type of the Iraqi one.

There ten years of a cruel blockade have resulted in the death of at least 1.5 million of people, leaving other millions in the most terrible misery and causing the disruption of the entire health and education system. Also other countries which oppose to subordinate to the “New World Order” have to suffer from embargos like Cuba, Yugoslavia, North Korea and many others. Those blockades imposed in the sake of human rights, democracy and freedom are simply imperialist crimes against humanity.

The newly imposed sanctions against Afghanistan do not only show that the West does not care at all about the elementary interests of the people of Afghanistan (today nothing more than simple survival) which they claim to defend but also reveals it utmost hypocrisy. The Taliban used to be their own proxies in Afghanistan and the entire region of Central Asia ranging from the Caucasus to China. It is in fact a political force created and supported systematically by the US.

In order to fight the Afghan anti-imperialist forces and later the Soviet army the US and its Pakistani ally embarked on the full support to the “Islamic fundamentalist” Mujahedin. After the Russians left the country and an even more cruel civil war broke out between the rivalling factions of the Mujahedin, the US eventually backed the Taliban to take power and erect their barbarous regime.

But sometimes the sorcerer looses control of the ghosts it has called. Osama bin Laden himself is the best example. A creature heavily funded by the US to fight the Soviet Union turned after the latter’s implosion into its enemy. Now the US apparently want to get rid of the most uncontrollable elements of the Taliban forcing a more moderate wing into power in Kabul. Thus they set pressure on the direct masters of the Taliban, the armed forces of Pakistan. But also those are only reluctantly carrying out the order from their rulers in Washington as they fear not only for their direct control over Afghanistan but even more for their geo-strategic role on the sub-continent which seems to be more and more put into question by the apparent US attempt of rapprochement with India against China. The Pakistani ruling class wants to preserve with its ongoing support to the Taliban a trump which can be played against the US for a stronger bargaining position. Therefore a direct military !
!
attack of the US in form of the Yugoslav-type air raids can no more be ruled out.

However, the US still need the “Islamic fundamentalist” forces in the struggle to control Central Asia and the Caucasus weakening China and Russia. Therefore the final task of the operation will not be to wipe them out but to force them to “reason”.

In order to fight the reactionary rule of the Taliban the anti-imperialist forces of the region and of the world cannot relay upon imperialist political, economic and military intervention. Only by defending the elementary interests of the exhausted popular masses of Afghanistan both against imperialism and the Taliban they can regain their respect and support. The anti-imperialist forces have to be the leaders of the struggle against the sanction and the imperialist pressure showing that the Taliban’s anti-imperialism are cheap phrases while they have been and still are the agent of imperialism against both the Afghan people and the peoples’ of Central Asia.


Down with the sanction against Afghanistan!

Lift all the Western sanction against the peoples and states resisting the tyrant “New World Order”!

Support the struggle of the Afghan popular forces against the reactionary Taliban regime!



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Received on Monday, 29 January 2001 04:18:51 UTC