Published on Wednesday, December 5, 2001

The Wall Street Journal and The Workers Vanguard Agree: Both
Capitalists and Communists Conclude Afghanistan Better Off
Under Soviets Than Northern Alliance

by Tom Turnipseed

 
The Wall Street Journal, the leading global newspaper of
business, is published by Dow Jones and Company who also
operate the world's most widely followed stock-market
indicator tracking the world's largest stock market. The
Workers Vanguard, is a Marxist working class biweekly of the
Spartacist League of the United States, which is the U. S.
Section of the International Communist League. Drawing from
Cold War history and the present war in Afghanistan, both
have published recent articles that agree Afghanistan was
better off under Soviet control than that of the Northern
Alliance.

In the December 4, 2001 edition of the Journal, Alan
Cullison reports from Kabul, Afghanistan on living
conditions when the Soviets were there under a heading of
"Soviet-Era Vision of Afghanistan Gains New Life in Ruins of
Kabul Neighborhood." Cullison story leads with, "In the
wrecked remnants of what was once one of Kabul's most
prestigious neighborhoods, American bombs have stirred a
fragile and ironic hope: the revival of a Soviet-era vision
of Afghanistan whose destruction Washington used to trumpet
as its greatest Cold War triumph." Cullison then quotes
Siarah Parlika, one of the oldest residents of the
Soviet-built Microrayon neighborhood, who said, "It used to
be beautiful-there was glass in our windows and we had
gardens."

Then the Cold War turned Afghanistan into a proxy
battleground between Washington and Moscow and destroyed
model communities like Microrayon.  Mr. Cullison says, "It
also trampled the first shoots of a secular political class
more interested in living standards than religious dogma."
The story reveals that the Soviets built swimming pools,
shops, and schools to serve the complex that housed 140,000
people and that attendance at the schools was compulsory for
boys and girls. It also reported that "Soviet-era Microrayon
represented a vision of Afghanistan's future far more in
tune with the West than the religious zealotry of the
U.S.-backed mujahedeen fighters who drove the Soviets from
Afghanistan in 1989."

The mujahedeen then overthrew the government left behind by
the Soviets in1992 and turned Microrayan and the capitol
city of Kabul into a no-man's land as they battled among
themselves for spoils. The Journal reported that the
apartments were occupied and looted by a succession of
Northern Alliance warlords. Stray rockets hit a city power
plant and Microrayan's heating plant knocking out heat,
lights and running water in 1993 and thieves emptied the
schools of their desks and chairs. When the Taliban took
over in 1996 they abolished the study of math, geography and
history and would not allow the girls to go to school.
Cullison reported that now, " herds of goats root through
apartment courtyards"...and, "Most of the doctors, teachers
and government technocrats that were the neighborhood's
original residents fled."

Also in the December 4 edition of the Wall Street Journal,
Andrew Higgins wrote from Kabul that, "Anti-Taliban troops
who last month captured the key northern city of
Mazar-e-Sharif have begun fighting among themselves,
prompting the United Nations to evacuate international staff
from the area and raising fears of a violent rift in the
U.S.-backed Northern Alliance." What's new! Higgins said the
fighting among the Northern Alliance threatens to "badly
blemish American strategy in Afghanistan: instead of
bringing peace, the defeat of the Taliban regime ignites a
new round of conflict among victors." Although Kabul has
been relatively peaceful, other areas under the Northern
Alliance control have also experienced unrest and
violence. There are three main factions or ethnic groups
involved: the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and Hazaras. The Tajiks and
Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims whose roots are in the two former
Soviet republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and the
Hazaras are Shiite Muslims who are supported by
Iran. Higgins reported that "the potentially explosive
ethnic, religious and political fissures...risk dividing
Afghanistan into a jumble of warlord fiefdoms."

The Workers Vanguard of November 30, 2001 was headlined
"U.S.-Backed Killers Take Kabul" and reported, "the Northern
Alliance cutthroats are already displaying the internecine
feuding and murderous barbarity of their four years of power
in the mid-1990s." The Vanguard said the Northern Alliance
was "Hailed as 'liberators' by Washington and the Western
media", and "media mouth-pieces have portrayed the Northern
Alliance as bearers of freedom for the Afghan masses,
especially women."  The Vanguard said during the four years
the Northern Alliance ruled Afghanistan (1992-1996), "they
killed countless civilians, perpetrated mass rapes and
enslaved women in the veil," and that "The display of
crocodile tears by American rulers for the enslaved women of
Afghanistan is the most repulsive hypocrisy." It calls Osama
bin Laden and the Taliban "Islamic fundamentalist killers
unleashed by the U.S. in the 1980s against the soviet Red
Army."

The Vanguard newspaper, published in New York, said, "the
Soviet military presence there was one of the few truly
progressive acts carried out by the Stalinist bureaucracy,
which brought the only hope of emancipation for the
hideously oppressed women of Afghanistan."

These ideological opposites of journalism overwhelmingly
agree about the key players in the Cold War in Afghanistan,
and the continuing conflict in that war-torn country. Isn't
it time for the Bush administration and their pandering
propagandists, a/k/a news reporters, in the major television
and news organizations to begin telling the truth to the
American people???

Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and civil rights
activist in Columbia, South
Carolina. http://www.turnipseed.net