-----Original Message----- From: Kevin Robert Dean <qualiall_2 at yahoo.com>
>--- Luke Weiger <lweiger at umich.edu> wrote:
>
>My CP-USA friend insists there was no "Soviet
>Invasion" of Afghanistan, but were only there to help
>the Socialist government that took power there..I'm
>ignorant of this history
Whether it was an 'invasion' or not is a matter of perspective, I suppose. In 1978 the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), faced with the danger of a right-wing crackdown, took power in Kabul and attempted to extend socialist revolution to the countryside. This party had two factions which had been organizationally separate for most of their existence, the Khalq (People) and the Parcham (Banner). They were inexperienced and were attempting a very ambitious program in very difficult circumstances.
The Khalq gained the ascendancy in the government, and were accused of proceeding without regard for traditional sensibilities and using too much force. There was resistance which was (as we now know) aided by the US. In mid-1979, the Khalq leader, Mohammed Nur Taraki, was killed, apparently by another Khalq leader, Hafizullah Amin. Amin was later accused of being a CIA agent. Others say that he had meetings with US agents and wanted to make Afghanistan non-aligned. In any case it was pretty clear that unless something happened the PDPA would lose the war in short order.
During this period the Parcham leader, Babrak Karmal, was the ambassador of Afghanistan to the USSR. In November of 1979, Karmal returned to Afghanistan along with a Soviet military force, Amin was killed, and a Parcham government was installed. The Karmal government took a more moderate tone, but did proceed with education of women, abolition of usury, land reform, and many other progressive measures. However the USA and China gave tons of aid to the rebels. The USSR withdrew its troops in 1989 with the rightward turn in Soviet politics, but the PDPA government held on until 1992 when it was overthrown by warlords some of whom are now in the "Northern Alliance".
The CPUSA tends to gloss over the fact that the troops went in in agreement with Karmal, not with Amin, who was killed. On the other hand Karmal was arguably at least as legitimate an Afghan socialist leader as Amin by that time, and to argue that the USSR was "imposing a puppet government" is overly simplistic. It was a difficult situation all around. What you think of the Soviet intervention depends on whether you think the PDPA government was a good thing, or whether it deserved to be overthrown by the CIA, Osama, and the Northern Alliance.
See also this article: http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/afghan0927.php
Lou Paulsen member, WWP, Chicago