>It seems to me that you and Tahir think of my post on RAWA as an
>example of thinking that goes like "RAWA criminal, Taliban
>anti-imperialist," or what DP calls "soft-on-the Qaeda" left (how's
>that for "black and white terms"?).
> Seriously, how else to interpret Tahir's post or your response to it?
Here's what you said (though he quoted several other people as well, so my gratitude for his research was about several posters other than you):
>The question is, however, whether RAWA's position stems from merely
>tactical and rhetorical considerations (e.g., necessity for survival,
>desire to appeal to liberal feminists in the West, etc.) or problems
>typical of liberal feminists whose foremost concerns are women of the
>bourgeois, land-owning, and/or petit-bourgeois classes, at the
>expense of peasant & proletarian women. Along with Mac, I suspect
>the latter is the case, as RAWA, according to their own admission,
>began their existence with their opposition to the socialists in
>Afghanistan who, with Soviet assistance, took power & implemented
>land reforms, education of women (beyond women of upper classes),
>etc. I say this while appreciating RAWA's criticism of the Northern
>Alliance.
I found your critique of RAWA rather incomprehensible. They're a mix of several ideological strands, including the socialist/Marxist/Maoist. How did you conclude that they're rather like Western bourgeois feminists?
I've got some sympathy for a pro-Soviet position on Afg, but there's no denying they were savagely brutal as well. They flattened whole villages and left thousands of landmines behind. They probably killed more civilians in a month than the entire U.S. campaign has so far. If it's bad that the U.S. killed Afg civilians - and it is - then it's bad that the Soviets did too. And doesn't RAWA have some standing to criticize the Soviet invasion, being Afghans and all?
Doug