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Vol. 73/No. 20      May 25, 2009

 
U.S. troops out of Afghanistan!
(editorial)
 
Working people around the world should stand in solidarity with university students in Kabul, Afghanistan, who poured into the streets May 10 to denounce recent U.S. missile strikes that killed as many as 147 civilians in western Afghanistan. Like the 200 young women who marched in Kabul several weeks earlier for women’s rights (see May 4 Militant), the students demonstrated that the Afghan people are not the victims they are portrayed as by the imperialist powers and their media, but actors in the class battles unfolding on that part of the globe.

Washington proclaimed itself the savior of Afghanistan when it invaded that country in 2001—the opening shot in its “global war on terror.” Eight years later, that image is fading in the eyes of the local population, which has witnessed village after village bombed by U.S. forces seeking to rout Islamist fighters. As one of the Kabul students’ banner said, the U.S. government is “the biggest terrorist around the world.”

The events in Afghanistan go hand in hand with developments in neighboring Pakistan. With Washington’s backing the Pakistani army has relaunched military operations against Taliban forces in the Swat region, forcing 600,000 civilians to flee the area and trapping many other toilers between the Pakistani army and the Taliban.

In Iraq Gen. Raymond Odierno now says as many as 20 percent of U.S. troops will remain on urban patrols beyond the June 30 “deadline” to withdraw outside city limits. There are now 134,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, more than before the start of the 2007 “surge.”

The picture emerges, not of U.S. imperialism slowly pulling out of the region, but of Washington prolonging and spreading its multi-theater war in that part of the world, deepening the transformation of its fighting forces simultaneously.

Washington arrogantly declares its intention to continue the war drive, regardless of the damage done to the toilers. But its spreading wars also have unintended consequences. The overthrow by imperialist forces of the Taliban and Baathist governments in Afghanistan and Iraq inadvertently opened up political space for the working class and peasants to organize to advance their interests: for women to fight for their emancipation, for peasants to demand land reform, for oppressed nationalities, like the Kurds in Iraq, to press for self-determination, and for separation of religious institutions from politics and the state.

All over the world we need to continue mobilizing to demand U.S. and coalition forces get out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan now! The stronger our voices, the more political space can be won by workers and peasants in that war-torn region to advance their interests.
 
 
Related articles:
Afghans protest war, bombings of villages
U.S. warplanes kill more than 100 civilians
Toilers bear brunt of Pakistani offensive
U.S. troops to patrol cities in Iraq past ‘pullout deadline’  
 
 
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