More on Afghanistan
I want to thank Megan Arney for her excellent informative article on Afghanistan in last week's issue of the Militant. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Afghanistan from 1967-1969, and read with horror the latest news from Afghanistan. I would like to add a few other things.

First, the country of Afghanistan was an artificial construct set up by the victors of World War I. If you look at a map prior to World War I, you will not see Afghanistan. It was created after World War I as a buffer between the British and French and to stop the spread of communism from the Central Asian Soviet Republics into Persia (now Iran) and India.

The way the borders of the country were drawn make sense only to capitalists. The people who live in northern Afghanistan, which borders on the Central Asian republics, are culturally and linguistically like the people of those republics.

The people of Herat, which is a large city on the western border, were the same brand of Shia Muslims as the Muslims of Iran. Another large ethnic group in the southern part of the country is Pushto.

The Pushtuns had high hopes after India gained its independence and the state of Pakistan was created that they too would get their own country.

The Pushtuns, like the Kurds, stretch across three different countries. They stretch across Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the oil rich southern part of Iran. In the late '40s and '50s, they struggled for their own state of Pushtunistan and were brutally suppressed by the Pakistani government.

The main value of Afghanistan for the United States has always been strategic. During the Cold War in the '50s, Afghanistan got four paved roads which circle the country.

The U.S. built one road from Herat to Kandahar and an airport in Kandahar which could have been used to attack the U.S.S.R. The U.S.S.R. built a road from Kabul to Kunduz near the border with the U.S.S.R., etc.

Afghanistan has no natural resources. The Russians explored for natural gas but found none. The war in Afghanistan has gone on for years why is the U. S. ready to recognize a brutal reactionary regime like the Tabilan. According to Ms. Arney's article, it is Afghanistan's strategic value to a U.S. oil company which wants to build a pipeline through it.

I have sent copies of the article to Peace Corps volunteers I still have contact with. It is also inspiring me to pick up a copy of To See the Dawn published by Pathfinder Press the next time I visit the Pathfinder Bookstore in San Francisco.

Lenore Sheridan

San Jose, California Songs for Leonard Peltier
Readers of the Militant will be pleased to know about the release of a 17-song CD called Pine Ridge: An Open Letter to Allan Rock - Songs for Leonard Peltier.

Allan Rock is the Canadian Minister of Justice. Leonard Peltier was framed up for the murder of two FBI agents at Pine Ridge, South Dakota in 1975. He is still in prison at Leavenworth, Kansas over twenty years later.

The CD features well-known Canadian musicians and writer Michael Ondaatje. It has two aims. First to raise the public profile and funding for Peltier's case. Second to pressure Rock to protest the use of false affidavits that were used to extradite Leonard from Canada to stand trial in the U. S. in 1976.

The driving force behind the project is Greg Keelor from the band Blue Rodeo. "The case has been on [Rock's] agenda for about two years now and he said he is going to deal with it," he told the Vancouver Sun. "One reason we did the record is to get the issue a little higher on the agenda."

The liner notes accompanying the CD include the text of an open letter from Frank Dreaver, coordinator of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, to Rock detailing the complicity of the Canadian government authorities in Peltier's frame-up. Artists on the CD include Jim Cuddy, also of Blue Rodeo; Sarah McLachlan; Jane Sibbery; and fiddler Ashley MacIsaac. Keelor contributes the title song, a country ballad of Peltier's story that runs almost ten minutes.

Monica Jones

Vancouver, British Columbia

Thanks for the `Militant'

I just came across the Militant last month in Montreal and was so impressed with the two issues I read that I want to continue reading it.

I just happened across the Pathfinder bookstore while in Montreal, and later had the pleasure of meeting some of the Young Socialists group.

E.M.

Austin, Texas Thank you from a Chicano
Thank you for all your coverage on the march from Sacramento to San Diego. From a Marchista and a Chicano! Forward forever, backwards never.

R.M.

San Diego, California CIA and drugs
The discussion in the Militant concerning the CIA and drugs in Los Angeles reminded me of a very important book by Alfred McCoy titled, "The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia" (This was reviewed a long time ago in the Militant.) Actually the book is a much broader history of drug use in the U.S. Its main point is that the origins of the drug trade are in the social force that imperialism depends on to oppress its colonies and otherwise defend its interests against the working class throughout the world. It explains how there was almost no drug use in the US immediately following WWII as a result of the disruption of shipping during the war. But drugs began to flow again as the "French connection" was reestablished when the OSS formed an alliance with the Mafia in order to have a support network for the U.S. invasion of Italy (Lucky Luciano was even released from prison to function as a liaison for the invasion force, anything rather than depend on and arm the resistance movement of armed workers and peasants) and then worked with the mob to organize a physical defeat of the powerful dockworkers union in Marseilles. The book explains also, the reasons why the U.S. wouldn't help stop the growth of poppy flowers in Turkey that are the raw material for this traffic.

It also goes into great detail in the social base of the U.S - backed dictatorships in southeast Asia, which depended a great deal on drug trafficking out of the golden triangle area. How these forces were used against the Chinese revolution and then the Vietnamese revolution - and abetted by the U.S. war machine there.

McCoy's history helps argue for a strong case against any conspiracy theory on the rise of the drug trade and its connections to the CIA. In addition to being a function of the capitalist market system, the drug trade also has its origins in the needs of U.S. foreign policy and the social forces it relies on to maintain imperialist domination.

Pete Seidman

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of general interest to our readers. Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.  
 
 
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