Afghanistan

A long way to go on gay rights

According to the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) seven majority Muslim countries still maintain the death penalty for homosexual activity. They are Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen. In northern Nigeria, where some states use Sharia law, homosexuality is also punishable by death. In Iran gay men are normally arrested under other trumped up charges. But in September 2011 three men were executed for homosexuality. And when execution is not used other brutality can be. In 2010 a Saudi man was sentenced to 500 lashes and five years in jail for...

The Afghan Tragedy and the Socialist Party (Militant)

The Afghan Tragedy: USSR troops out - the socialist case. Published by Socialist Organiser as 'Socialist Forum' magazine no.3, July 1985. Click here to download whole text as pdf , or read online. PART 1: THE STALINIST APRIL 1978 COUP AND THE RUSSIAN DECEMBER 1979 INVASION PART 2: GRANT, TAAFFE AND WOODS HAIL THE STALINIST COUP AND BACK THE INVADERS PART 3: AND STALINIST REVOLUTIONS PART 4: MILITANT/SOCIALIST PARTY AND STALINIST EXPANSION

Afghan tragedy - the Militant/ Socialist Party and Afghanistan, part 4

Part 4: The next stage for the working class: submission to totalitarian suppression. Contents Click here to read whole text as pdf PART 1: THE STALINIST APRIL 1978 COUP AND THE RUSSIAN DECEMBER 1979 INVASION PART 2: GRANT AND TAAFFE HAIL THE STALINIST COUP AND BACK THE INVADERS PART 3: MILITANT/SOCIALIST PARTY AND STALINIST REVOLUTIONS PART 4: MILITANT/SOCIALIST PARTY AND STALINIST EXPANSION But in this rosy perspective, Grant dismisses the working class entirely for the whole next stage of history in most of the world! The working class has no role to play except to 'support' the semi...

The Afghan Tragedy, part 3: Militant (the Socialist Party) on the "Third World"

Militant (the Socialist Party) on the "Third World". Contents Click here to read whole text as pdf PART 1: THE STALINIST APRIL 1978 COUP AND THE RUSSIAN DECEMBER 1979 INVASION PART 2: GRANT AND TAAFFE HAIL THE STALINIST COUP AND BACK THE INVADERS PART 3: MILITANT/SOCIALIST PARTY AND STALINIST REVOLUTIONS PART 4: MILITANT/SOCIALIST PARTY AND STALINIST EXPANSION The picture of the Third World presented in such articles as Grant's 1978 piece on 'the colonial revolution' is as follows. Capitalism means nothing but stagnation. The inevitable way forward, once the local middle class has 'tired' of...

The Afghan Tragedy: Part 1. The Stalinist April 1978 Coup and the December 1979 Russian Invasion

The Afghan Tragedy: USSR troops out - the socialist case. Part 1 The Stalinist 1978 Coup. Published by Socialist Organiser as 'Socialist Forum' magazine no.3, July 1985. Contents Click here to read whole text as pdf PART 1: THE STALINIST APRIL 1978 COUP AND THE RUSSIAN DECEMBER 1979 INVASION PART 2: GRANT AND TAAFFE HAIL THE STALINIST COUP AND BACK THE INVADERS PART 3: MILITANT/SOCIALIST PARTY AND STALINIST REVOLUTIONS PART 4: MILITANT/SOCIALIST PARTY AND STALINIST EXPANSION What characterises Bolshevism on the national question is that in its attitude towards oppressed nations, even the most...

The Afghan Tragedy - Part 2: Grant, Taaffe, and Woods hail the Stalinist coup and back the Russian invaders

Grant hails the PDP coup. Contents Click here to read whole text as pdf PART 1: THE STALINIST APRIL 1978 COUP AND THE RUSSIAN DECEMBER 1979 INVASION PART 2: GRANT AND TAAFFE HAIL THE STALINIST COUP AND BACK THE INVADERS PART 3: MILITANT/SOCIALIST PARTY AND STALINIST REVOLUTIONS PART 4: MILITANT/SOCIALIST PARTY AND STALINIST EXPANSION It so happened that Ted Grant published a major statement of his position on 'the colonial revolution' just a few months after the April 1978 Afghan coup, in Militant International Review, No.14, Summer 1978. At the end of a very long article proclaiming that the...

Obama tries to escape Afghan ratchet

In October 2010, Ahmed Rashid, author of much-read books on the Taliban and the Afghan war, wrote: “In the past year, violent incidents have risen by 50 per cent, the Taliban have spread to the north and west of the country and the battle for control of the Taliban-dominated Pashtun south and east gets bloodier by the day”. The results of Obama’s 2009 “surge” of extra US troops into Afghanistan has not been significantly better since then. In May 2011 Rashid assessed “the security situation” as “actually worsening”. The US can always defeat the Taliban in head-on battle. But then the Taliban...

US looks for deal with Taliban

The USA is stepping up its efforts to negotiate a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Whether it can succeed is another matter. Britain and the US are pressing the United Nations to drop sanctions against Taliban leaders. The US is backing diplomatic moves to get a public Taliban political office set up somewhere in the region. The USA has already had talks with the Taliban, as has the Kabul government. It has quietly dropped its previous preconditions that the Taliban must break links with al Qaeda, renounce violence, and accept the Afghan constitutions. Speaking to the BBC on 21 May...

Editorials: Israel-Palestine, 2 nations 2 states; industrial fightback; USSR moves towards pulling out of Afghanistan

The insurgent Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank are now teaching the people of Israel that Karl Marx was right when he wrote that "a nation which enslaves another can never itself be free". The first intifada started in December 1987. Nurses began strike action in January 1988, the first big industrial flare-up since the defeat of the miners' strike in 1985. After eight years of unsuccessful efforts to crush the peoples of Afghanistan, the government of the USSR started talking openly about withdrawing from Afghanistan. Click here to download pdf .

Afghanistan: the countryside's revenge

“I lived in Kabul for two years as a child, right before the Russians invaded in 1979,” writes journalist Carla Power, “I remember it as an ochre city smelling of roses, wood smoke and sewage. Parakeets sang in the bazaars, and kids flew bright pink and green paper kites from the dusty hills ringing the city.” Not anymore. Much of Kabul is in ruins and the Islamic Taliban rulers have banned singing birds. They’ve banned kites too. Invite a foreigner over for tea? Take a friend’s photograph? Then Taliban edicts have been broken; it is sometimes difficult to know what not to do, as the edicts...

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