<html> Yo kmart, >Figures ... >Scratch a leftist, and ya get a liberal ... Yuck, the ultimate insult. I guess you get what you pay for when you muse out loud ... but I take issue w/your definition of "liberal." Does "liberal" mean "unabashed defender of Enlightenment ideals and institutions, regardless of temporal and social context" ? By this definition, Hitchens is a "liberal," an accusation I'm sure he'd stridently deny. (Not that my position is similar to Hitchens', thank mercy.) Or does "liberal" mean "out-and-out moral relativist" ? If so, drawing from you've written here, I can confidently say that you're closer to a "liberal" than I am. But an end to the pejorative name-calling ... >Is such a thing possible? Really, is it possible to create a secular reform >regime in Afghanistan that will have any significant degree of popular support? >ESPESCIALLY in Pashtun areas, has it dawned on you that such a move >might meet violent resistance? The Daoud government was basically an >attempt to, from top down, impose "progressive" reforms on people who largely >did not want them. While outside States did have a hand in the fall of the >Daoud regime, most leftist commentators ignore the possibility that there really >was SIGNIFICANT popular discontent with this regime. Especially in areas like >Nuristan, the Nuristanis were even more dead set against secular reforms than >the Pashtuns. Well, you clearly know tenfold more about Afghan history, social structure, ethnic groupings, and so on than I do. Most of what I know I've learned in the last few weeks (like a lot of people). I am aware that the educational, land reform, gender rights, etc. policies instituted by the Daoud regime were "top down" and resisted by many, some passively, some actively. I have read elsewhere something to the effect that big landowners and tribal chieftains etc. exploited popular hostility to the overweening "modernizers" in order to protect their own considerable privileges. I suppose one of the more telling indictments one could make of heavy-handed bureaucratic attempts at "modernization" is that it lays the groundwork for a counteroffensive by reactionaries with their "invented traditions" (my guess is that pre-1978 Afghanistan did not feature sharia as has the country since 1996, for example). In any event, you do point to a very important phenomenon which troubled revolutionary nationalist regimes everywhere, the way in which "enlightened liberal" reforms clashed with the folkways of peasants, recent migrants to the city, etc. (in the case of Afghanistan, I guess, itinerant herdspeople as well). Although my guess is that in many instances it was not only the violation of the moral lifeworlds of the common folk that was decisive, but also a) the strong-armed way in which reforms were enacted (forced collectivizations, banning the practice of religion, compulsory settlement programs, etc.) and b) the failure of the revolutionary nationalist regimes to deliver on their promises (due to both their own venality as well as the forces of imperialism).  >A better option would be to leave the Afghani people alone, they have had 200 >or so years of well meaning progressive outsiders meddling in their affairs, >leave them alone, they will work their own way out. >If they want their corrupt, though now senile, King Zahir Shah back then fine, >if they want a Wahabi style Islamic regime then fine, if they want a secular >socialist regime then fine. >These people deserve the right to as a people chart their own destinies without >outside agitation, either from the right or the left. Just as there is nothing "authentically Afghani" about the harsher forms of misogyny to which women are subjected under the Taliban, after what you refer to as 200 years of imperial and sub-imperial meddling in Afghanistan there can be no such thing as "the Afghani people charting their own destiny." The groupings that have state power and want to take state power have Pakistan, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Russia (not to mention cliques of armed men from across the world of Islam) inextricably imprinted all over them. Which is not to say that one shouldn't oppose unilateral or multilateral intervention, but to contest the notion that any such creature as the undistilled "Afghani people" will work out a political resolution, a notion that serves to shelter whatever the "Afghani people" "decide for themselves" from comradely (or non-comradely) criticism. >You underestimate UnoCal. One does not need a viable state in order to push >a pipeline project through, just agreements with enough factions and tribal >groups to provide physical security, and to ensure that all significant parties >have a stake in the project's success. My remark about UnoCal was a throwaway line; what I was trying to get at is that a massive, sustained attack by the U.S. to "end the Taliban" doesn't seem rational for big oil, which putatively has a big influence over Bush Adminstration foreign policy. If big oil called the shots, quite clearly the war machine would not be ready to pound Afghanistan into submission -- from what I understand the Taliban have long been willing and able to cut a deal, and for whatever reason (State Department opposition ? Fear of another Burma-style boycott ?) haven't ... I'm sure someone out there has the line on this. >>is that according to Afghani labor radicals >Obviously objective sources... Yeah, I probably fetishized the accuracy of that source's information too readily, but what in your mind is the interest of said source in a) inflating the strength of bin Laden's private army and b) downplaying the strength of the Taliban legions ? To paint bin Laden as a "very dangerous man" (who thus must be cut down) and the Taliban as "illegitimate" (hence deserving of overthrow) ? This same source said he opposed U.S. intervention, although he wasn't clear on whether he opposed more aid to the Northen Alliance (I'm sure he probably wouldn't) or a "multilateral" bombing and/or invasion. >These guys should smoke less Hashish. A *few* groupings of students in >clerical >schools? >What labor radicals told you this? From my understanding, this picture is >almost >completely unrealistic. There are HUGE numbers of Pashtun Talibs in >Madressas >in the NWFP and along the Afghan border who support the Taliban, in addition >support for the Taliban has risen IMMENSELY amongst non Talib settled >Pashtuns >along the Afghan border in the NWFP. Support for the Taliban is low in Tajik >areas from what I understand, but while they ARE disliked my many Pashtuns, >from what I've heard many see few other viable options. I might have exaggerated what this guy wrote about the talibs. Save acquiring more information from other sources, I don't what or who to believe at this point. In any event, the issue of how broad explicit and tacit support for the Taliban is is rather academic, since I think that any politically realistic form of intervention will do much more harm than good. >I hope that this sort of stuff is not coming from RAWA sources, it would just >further lower my respect for them ... No, not RAWA. What's your take on them ? An originally "organic" NGO now co-opted by humanitarian imperialist backing ? So far as I recall they too oppose "Western" military intervention in Afghanistan, although of course they would dearly love to see the Taliban go. How do they think this can best be accomplished, through further diplomatic, economic, and military isolation ? >>Even though I am still espousing Yoshie's program, I must admit that the >>more and more I survey >>the details of this whole atrocious mess, the harder it becomes to take a >>clear position. All the >>better, then, I suppose to take an unyielding stand against U.S. military >>intervention of any sort, >Right on. Yeah, I frighten myself sometimes. Must be the company I'm keeping ... BTW, I know that both Wahhabist "fundamentalism" _and_ the "fundamentalist" faction in the Northern Alliance both detest Shi'ites ... how do Afghani Shi'ites fit into the whole picture about which you seem to know plenty ? John Gulick</html>