Maoists in RAWA? Re: Taliban/Birmingham

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>At 10:09 AM 11/29/01 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>Furuhashi wrote:
>>
>>>RAWA (whose agenda should be perfectly harmless to the Empire)
>>
>>Why do you say that? What do you see as RAWA's agenda? Is the 
>>"Revolutionary" part of their name simply gestural?
>>
>>Doug
>
>they were anti-commie. bad RAWA, bad.
>
>kelley

Citing Tariq Ali, Doug claims that Maoists are playing an important 
role in RAWA:

At 8:34 PM -0500 11/25/01, Doug Henwood wrote to Rad-Green:
>Tariq Ali told me that RAWA is full of revolutionaries of various 
>sorts, with Maoists playing an important role.

I heard the same rumor from two leftists whose politics isn't close to Doug's.

Is it true that Maoists were or are in RAWA, shaping its politics? 
Maoism may possibly explain RAWA's anti-Sovietism (which isn't the 
same as anticommunism), but other than that, I don't see the impact 
of Maoists (who would be normally very big on organizing peasants in 
the countryside, analyzing the contradiction between town and 
countryside, etc.) on the politics of RAWA (which seems to focus on 
the main concerns of educated urban Afghan women now in exile).  Does 
anyone have more info on this topic?
-- 
Yoshie

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