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   Vol.65/No.40            October 22, 2001 
 
 
Anti-imperialist struggles by the peoples of Afghanistan and surrounding countries
 
Below find a link to a map in pdf format. The peoples of Afghanistan and the nearby countries shown on this map have a rich history of revolutionary struggle against colonial and imperialist domination over the past two centuries. As part of its policy of divide and rule, the ruling British colonial power, which exercised control over much of this region in the nineteenth century, imposed many of the borders shown on the map.

In the country of Afghanistan, the geographical areas defining the 11 major ethnic groups flow across the arbitrary borders into the surrounding countries. The Pushtun people, for example, are divided by the boundary line between Afghanistan and what is today Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, an area taken away from Afghanistan by British imperialism at the end of 1900s. The Baluchi people live in areas across Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Both peoples have waged struggles for their national rights over the decades.

A revolutionary upsurge in Afghanistan reached its height in 1978. A popular revolt five years earlier had ousted King Muhammad Zahir Shah. The U.S. government is presently working to bring back the same king, now 86, as part of a pro-imperialist, anti-Taliban regime.

The government that came to power on the crest of the revolutionary mobilizations in 1978 won popular support for its program of social reforms, including land redistribution. But these were carried out in a bureaucratic fashion, providing an opening for reactionary landlord and capitalist layers to mobilize opposition. A civil war ensued in which Washington backed reactionary antigovernment forces. The government of the Soviet Union invaded and tried to occupy the country from 1979 to 1989. In response, Washington expanded its military aid to, and collaboration with, reactionary forces.

Some 150 years earlier, Afghan fighters fought and defeated British troops in three wars. In fighting from 1839–42, a British-installed puppet regime was overturned and 4,500 British troops, along with 12,000 other occupying forces, were driven out of Kabul. One person made it alive to the border.
 
IRAQ
A revolution toppled the monarchy in 1958. In the years afterward, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist forces blocked the toilers of Iraq from moving forward. In 1980 the capitalist regime of Saddam Hussein invaded Iran as part of an imperialist-inspired counterrevolutionary drive. Because the toilers in Iran mobilized a massive military defense of the revolution, the counterrevolutionary assault failed to topple Iran's government.

The U.S. rulers attacked Iraq during the 1990-91 Gulf War, aiming to establish a protectorate. Despite a murderous assault and continuing sanctions and aggression carried out by Washington against Iraq's sovereignty–actions that have left hundreds of thousands dead--the imperialists have failed to topple the Iraqi government. Over the past decade Washington and London have maintained an embargo on the country and have continued to drop bombs on Iraq as they patrol "no-fly" zones unilaterally imposed over large parts of the country.
 
IRAN
Broad mobilizations in the early 1950s led to the nationalization of the oil industry, a measure fiercely resisted by British imperialism, which had kept Iran in semi-feudal bondage. In 1953 the U.S. government helped install the terror regime of the shah, making Israel and Iran the two main pillars of imperialist reaction in the region.

In 1979 deepening mobilizations of the Iranian masses, especially of the working class in the cities, overthrew the shah and dealt a major blow to imperialist interests. From that date the U.S. government has been trying to reverse the gains of the revolution.

Baku
The workers and peasants took power and established soviet rule in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the spring of 1920. The Communist International under Lenin called representatives of the toilers of the East to a joint congress in that city in September 1920. Two thousand delegates from colonial and semicolonial countries met with the leaders of the revolutionary working class of Europe and the United States to forge an alliance under the slogan, "Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite!"
 
CENTRAL ASIAN REPUBLICS
Long oppressed by the Russian czars, the peoples of central Asia, living in the countries of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kaz-akh--–stan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan shown on the map, revolted in 1916 against compulsory conscription into the Russian army, then embroiled in World War I. The October 1917 revolution in Russian threw off their foreign oppressors, and the new government provided them aid to advance economically and culturally. The peoples of Central Asia joined with the Red Army during the civil war to defeat the counterrevolution.

Leon Trotsky, a central leader of the Russian revolution, wrote, "The policy of Bolshevism on the national question, having ensured the victory of the October revolution, also helped the Soviet Union to hold out afterward notwithstanding inner centrifugal forces and a hostile environment."

As part of their war against Afghanistan, the U.S. imperialists are aiming to gain more access to the Central Asian Republics and to establish a military base against the Russian workers state.
 
 
The map is in Adobe Acrobat format (PDF), which requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat Reader software, click on the icon below to get a free download of it.

 
Click on this link to view the map.
 
 
Other articles from the ISR:
Communists and the struggle against imperialism today
Speakers weigh revolutionary traditions, political opportunities
Lessons of U.S. war against Iraq
Socialist workers in unions discuss campaign against imperialism and its war drive
 
 
 
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