BY MEGAN ARNEY

On September 27, the rightist army of the Taliban entered Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, and proclaimed a new government. Former president Burhanuddin Rabbani along with troops loyal to his regime and hundreds of civilians had fled the day before to Parwan, north of the capital.

Once in power, the Taliban - routinely described in the big-business press as "Islamic fundamentalists" - unleashed a new wave of reactionary measures. The Clinton administration indicated it may consider establishing diplomatic relations sometime in the future.

Rabbani's administration had come to power as a result of the defeat of the Moscow-backed regime of Sayid Mohammed Najibullah, which collapsed in 1992 after a sustained offensive by 16 major guerrilla groups armed and financed by Washington and neighboring capitalist regimes. Following the collapse of Najibullah's government, the reactionary guerrilla armies, based largely on different ethnic groups or regions, fought among themselves for power, forming a succession of coalition governments.

The Taliban emerged in 1994 as a major force among the anticommunist amalgam of competing armies. They have been covertly backed by the capitalist government of Pakistan with arms, ammunition, and money, although Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto routinely denied such reports. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia governments have also given support to the group. Rabbani's regime was backed by Tehran.

The Taliban, based among the historically dominant Pashtun tribes in southern Afghanistan, first established control of rural areas as well as Kandahar and Herat, two of the country's main cities. In the last two years they have gained control of 70 percent of the country. Reactionary measures
Upon entering the capital, Taliban militiamen removed Najibullah from the United Nations-controlled area where he had taken sanctuary and executed him. The new authorities then publicly hanged Najibullah's bloody body, next to his brother. They later announced they hanged two other aides to Najibullah. Referring to the executed former president, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani said, "He was against Islam. He was a criminal. He was a Communist." Rabbani is the cleric who was named the head of a six-member provisional council to govern the capital.

After capturing Kabul, the Taliban instituted draconian measures, banning women from work outside the home, with very few exceptions. Girls were forbidden from going to school. Death by stoning was set as punishment for adultery and drug offenses. Movie theaters were closed, the Kabul television station was shut down, and the playing of all music as well as dancing were banned. Washington Post reporter Kathy Gannon wrote that two women, apparently accused of showing their ankles through the head-to-toe dress now required for women in Kabul, were whipped publicly with a car radio antenna by two Taliban soldiers.

Alcohol consumption was also banned, with the threat of public lashes for offenders. The Taliban administration said it will execute murderers and drug dealers, and will amputate the hands and feet of thieves. Support by Washington
According to the New York Times, the State Department has indicated that it would like to reestablish a presence in Kabul, "once security there improved." No U.S. embassy or diplomatic ties have been established there since 1979. Washington will send a diplomat to Kabul "in the next couple of days," State Department spokesperson Nicholas Burns said October 2.

A Washington Post editorial the same day said, "The diplomatic task the U.S. has in Afghanistan is to apply what residual influence it may have there to the discouragement of further competitive intervention by Pakistan and Iran, which have backed the Taliban and the [former] Kabul regime respectively."

Earlier that day, Mohammed Stanakzai, deputy foreign minister in the provisional government established by the Taliban, said that the rightist regime wanted "friendly and good relations" with Washington, and would welcome U.S. investments in Afghanistan.

Unocal, the U.S. oil company that had plans to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan, said October 2 that the recent Taliban takeover would give a boost to the project. "If this leads to peace, stability, and international recognition, then this is a positive development," said Unocal vice president Chris Taggart.

An editorial in the October 8 New York Times said the Taliban regime "has brought a measure of stability to the country for the first time in years."

Not all capitalist regimes in the region are happy with the new government, however. Newspapers in Pakistan quoted Iranian officials describing the Taliban as "violent, narrow-minded and reactionaries."

The developments have also been met with grave concern in ruling circles of neighboring republics of the former USSR. "The sweeping military success of the Taliban Islamic movement," said an article in the October 3 Financial Times of London, "has upset the strategic balance of forces in the surrounding region and has sent a shockwave through the Commonwealth of Independent States."

The government of Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic north of Afghanistan, asked the United Nations to impose an arms embargo against Afghanistan, fearing the Taliban may enter its territory. Meanwhile, Afghanistan's new Information Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, issued a warning to Russia and the Central Asian states against "interfering in its internal affairs." One of world's poorest countries
Afghanistan, with a population of 15 million, is one of the world's poorest countries. Life expectancy averages just 43 years. More children die in infancy there than anywhere else in the world. Some 88 percent of the population is illiterate.

Afghanistan was ruled by a monarchy until 1973, in a system where the ruler was chosen by Pashtun tribal leaders. Based on four dominant nationalities and numerous smaller ones, the country never developed into a modern nation-state. Under monarchical rule, Afghan peasants labored under semi-feudal conditions. Eighty percent of those in the countryside did not own enough land on which to subsist, or did not own land at all. Many of the big landowners enriched themselves through producing and trading in opium.

These oppressive conditions fueled social unrest among the peasantry, students, and the country's small working class, leading to a revolt that toppled the monarchy in 1973. A republic was declared and Mohammed Daud, the king's cousin, became president.

Daud appointed several members of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) to cabinet posts. Formed in 1965 by middle-class radicals, the PDPA initially attracted some young people, workers, and military officers who wanted to change the old order. The PDPA, which developed close ties with the Communist Party of the USSR, had no significant base among the peasants or the small number of wage workers.

Trade unions were legalized for the first time. Freedom of religion was guaranteed. Police files were burned and 13,000 political prisoners set free.

The announced measures threatened the power and privileges of the landlord class, which launched an armed struggle to topple the new government and restore the old semifeudal order.

Washington rushed to assist these rightist forces, projecting them as "freedom fighters." The U.S. government generously contributed almost $2 billion in arms and aid to various Afghan mujahedeen rebel groups over the next 13 years. As a result of the war, 2 million Afghans have died, 2.5 million have fled as refugees to Iran, and another 3 million to Pakistan. Scattered throughout the country today are 10 million land mines, according to the United Nations estimates. Workers and peasants not organized
In response to the landlord-backed counterrevolutionary attacks, the PDPA carried out a political course that weakened its base among the toilers. Instead of organizing and mobilizing workers and peasants to struggle against their oppression to advance the democratic revolution in Afghanistan, the regime attempted to impose sweeping reforms by administrative decrees. When this met resistance, the government tried to implement measures by force. It was encouraged and supported in this path by Moscow.

While tens of thousands of land titles were handed out to peasants and the abolition of usury was proclaimed, for example, small farmers were not organized to defend, extend, or consolidate these measures. No means were provided for obtaining the seed, animals, and credit that the landlords had previously controlled.

The literacy campaign was made compulsory, and physical force rather than persuasion was often used to assemble villagers for classes. Threats posed by counterrevolutionary forces were met by heavy-handed military and repressive measures. Often whole villages were bombed where rightists were thought to have support.

The bureaucratic and arbitrary methods of the PDPA politically and physically disarmed the peasants and drove many to the side of the landlord-backed counterrevolutionary groups who called for a "holy war" against "atheistic communism."

Violent factional struggles within the PDPA itself split the government at the highest levels, resulting in the replacement and execution of successive leaders. In September of 1979, Afghan president Nur Mohammed Taraki was murdered and deposed by Hafzullah Amin.

In a culmination of its disastrous policy toward Afghanistan, Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops to prop up the increasingly unpopular PDPA regime in December 1979. Over the next decade, Soviet troop strength in Afghanistan reached 115,000. In addition, the Afghan government and Soviet forces carried out a widespread bombing campaign in the countryside with the aim of breaking the strength of the rebel militias. By the time the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February 1989, they had destroyed some 12,000 villages.

The arrival of the Soviet military to prop up the discredited PDPA regime violated the Afghan people's right to national sovereignty and broadened support for the rightist-led opposition.

In a resolution adopted in November 1980, the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party explained, "The Kremlin's policy in Afghanistan has set back the revolutionary process opened in April 1978, and has had a dampening effect on the class struggle."  
 
 
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