In April of 1978 a revolution took place in Afghanistan which brought the government of president Noor Mohammed Taraki to power. Its declared objective was to establish a secular state, including freedom of religion and a policy of non-alignment in foreign affairs. This was not a communist take-over (no communist party ever existed in Afghanistan) and the government maintained that the revolution was not foreign inspired, but rather carried out by the Afghan nationalists and revolutionaries.

As William Blumm tells it:⁽¹⁾ "Taraki’s Peoples Democratic Party inherited a backward nation, where people had a life expectancy of only about 40 years, an infant mortality rate of at least 25%, absolutely primitive life with widespread malnutrition, illiteracy of more than 90%, very few highways, not one mile of railway, most people living in tribes or as impoverished farmers in mud villages, identifying more with ethnic groups than with a larger political concept, a life scarcely different from that of many centuries earlier."

Clearly the Taraki government faced a monumental task to bring the nation into the modern era. But they tried. Reform with a socialist bent was the new government’s ambition. It included land reform, (while still retaining private property), controls on all prices and profits, and strengthening of the public sector, as well as the separation of church and state, eradication of illiteracy, legalization of trade unions, and the emancipation of women in a land almost entirely Muslim. These objectives were clearly in the interest of the Afghan people and, had the USA been truly interested in the well being of the Afghans, they should have supported such efforts for reform. In May of 1970, after just one year of the Taraki government, British political scientist Fred Halliday observed that "probably more has changed in the countryside over the last year than in two centuries since the state was established." Peasant debts to the landlords had been cancelled, the system of usury (by which peasants, who were forced to borrow money against future crops, were left in perpetual debt to money lenders) was abolished, and hundreds of schools and medial clinics were being built in the countryside.

But the United States saw the hand of Moscow lurking behind all this, and decided to thwart the Taraki program. A CIA inspired coup overthrew Taraki government (he died or more likely was killed right after) and brought his former deputy Hafizullah Amin to power, who tried to institute social change by riding roughshod over tradition and tribal and ethnic autonomy, thereby strengthening the powers that opposed change. The US was meanwhile supporting actively the opposition forces, including at that time rather unknown (to us) Osama bin Laden. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, US President Carter’s National Security Advisor: "it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president, in which I explained to him that in my opinion, this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of dragging the Russians into the Afghan trap."

Meanwhile the USSR, which shared a 1, 600 kilometer border with Afghanistan, feared very much the establishment of an Islamic state next door to its southern Soviet Republics, a fear that in hindsight appears fully justified. They also rightly feared a potential US presence on their southern border. When President Amin requested troops from USSR, and with a mutual assistance treaty in effect, the Soviet Union walked right into the US trap and got embroiled in what Brzezinski called "the Soviet’s Vietnam."

What followed is well known. Ten years of a devastating war, tens of thousands killed and maimed and the whole country in ruins. Then followed the years of the Taliban, in turn followed by more wars, ending in today’ US and NATO occupation. With US appointed government more or less in control of Kabul and the rest of the country in the hands of regional warlords, Taliban forces are again increasing their strength and biding their time for a return to power.

Where does this leave the Afghan people? With the benefit of hindsight, if the US had not been so blinded by its obsessive anti-communism and instead supported the social reform efforts of the Taraki government, the people of Afghanistan might have been spared 25 years of misery. If the US-NATO promises of today can be believed, their efforts are aimed at the implementation of the same reforms that the previous Taraki government had already started to put into place back in 1979, i.e., building of hospitals for the sick and schools for the children, giving women equal status with men, the freedom to work and the right to wear or not to wear the Burka.

Twenty-five long years…and the struggle appears a long way from being over. For the Afghan people, being caught in the grips of power politics, it must seem like a lifetime.

(1) Much of this article is based on information contained in chaspter53 of the book "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Intervention Since World War II", by William Blum. Also see: http://www.tao.ca/solidaritu/s11/afghanistan1979-1992.html