Afghanistan

Bereaved Afghan families have accused the British Special Air Service (SAS) of summarily executing up to 80 unarmed men between 2010 and 2013, as part of a policy to kill “all fighting-age males… regardless of the threat they posed”. This latest war crime accusation against British Special Forces during the war in Afghanistan is yet another blow to the credibility of a rotten establishment, which has exposed the naked barbarity of imperialism and the capitalist system.

Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban in Afghanistan have subjected women to a brutal regime of oppression, whilst the whole population has been plunged into an abyss of hunger, disease and misery. Now, women have been excluded from education, leading to renewed protests. Hundreds of brave women have taken to the streets of Kabul and other cities, fully in the knowledge of the risk to their lives in doing so. In this video, the comrades of the Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA – the youth wing of the IMT in Pakistan) send their solidarity.

In 2001 US President George W Bush sent American troops into Afghanistan, and soon afterwards the Taliban regime fell. This was followed by years of fighting, in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed. After twenty years of fighting, the Taliban are now back in power.

With the shambolic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan earlier this month, thousands of Afghans are now looking to flee the country. Faced with an unprecedented humanitarian crisis of their own making, politicians in the US and Europe are crying crocodile tears over the hardships faced by refugees, while nonetheless abandoning them to their suffering.

America’s longest war has ended in abject shame and humiliation for US imperialism. Twenty years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the most powerful military force the world has ever known has been dealt total defeat at the hands of a band of primitive religious zealots.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan has turned into utter humiliation for US imperialism. It has not only exposed a relative military and economic decline, it has also exposed a growing mood of war-weariness at home. Workers in the US have become sick and tired of the ruling class’ endless military adventures, whilst the basic needs of US citizens at home are going unmet. This article was written one week ago, before the Taliban had taken Kabul. Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest developments.

Taliban forces are seizing swathes of territory in a countrywide offensive, as US troops withdraw from Afghanistan. It has been predicted that the puppet regime in Kabul, installed by US imperialism and its allies, could fall within a month.

Afghanistan is hurtling towards yet another civil war as US and allied forces withdraw after two decades of bloody occupation. The withdrawal of imperialist troops, announced by Joe Biden, is set to be completed by 31 August this year, although most US forces have already left or are in the process of hurriedly abandoning the country while the Taliban is advancing in many areas.

In the bourgeois media today, Afghanistan is portrayed only in relation to Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, warlords and drug cartels. While these ills are a sad fact of life in Afghanistan today, that was not always the case. 40 years ago, a revolution almost shook the country out of its backwardness, only to be thrown back after the imperialist-backed, fundamentalist counter-revolution. To understand the current situation in the Middle East, as well as the rise of the reactionary forces, it is necessary to understand the rise and fall of the Saur revolution in Afghanistan in 1978.

The last reports on Tuesday evening suggested that the Afghan government had suffered a serious setback after a Taliban offensive succeeded in taking control of much of Sangin, a strategic town in the Helmand province.

The recent visit of Pakistan’s military chief previous Sunday has been shrouded in mystery and marked by controversies ever since it was announced.  Apparently instigated by General Raheel Sharif, it comes just weeks after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with US President Barack Obama at the Oval Office to discuss many of the same issues said to be on his army chief's agenda, including Afghan peace talks and Pakistan's nuclear ambitions.

In the past couple of weeks, unprecedented events had been unfolding in Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of people have gathered in the streets of Kabul to protest against the gruesome beheading of 7 people, all whom were ethnically Hazara.

The final round of the presidential elections in Afghanistan, and the “deal” between the two “front runners”, on September 21, was so feeble, and the outcome so rotten, that even bourgeois analysts and reporters had to designate them as pathetic and repulsive.