>>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?
RAWA may very well have been "Maoist" in its double opposition to USA and USSR, but I don't see the group as having had a deep-rooted existence among Afghan peasants, unlike original Maoists during the days of the Chinese Revolution. If the group had had such roots, it probably wouldn't have been reduced to supporting the ex-king's peace plan.
>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?
Surely, the Soviets deserved criticisms, from RAWA and others, including the Soviet critics of the war. Would the Soviets have gotten "their Vietnam" without US intervention, though? Afghan socialists might have failed anyhow, with or without US intervention, but their chances would have been better without it.
I think I have already posted the following article by John Ryan here last year, but let me reproduce an excerpt from it again:
***** So, who is to blame for this? Both the USA and the USSR. What stupidity for the Soviets to send in troops to try to salvage a Marxist regime that was under attack by hordes of religious fanatics. Their mere presence on Afghan soil intensified American resolve and mujahedeen fanaticism. If the Soviets had simply provided weapons for the Afghan Marxist government, they may have survived the "barbarians at the gates" -- because ordinary Afghan people were not fanatics and they had supported the government's progressive reforms. And even if they lost to the mujahedeen, in time they might have prevailed and restored a progressive secular government. But now, because of the protracted war and the complete destruction of the country, and a Nazi-type regime in control, ordinary Afghan people are indeed defeated and without hope.
But if the Soviets are to blame, how about the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? The U.S. "Communist paranoia" was such that they supported and recruited the most reactionary fanatic religious zealots on the earth -- and used them as a proxy army to fight Communism and the U.S.S.R. -- in the course of which Afghanistan and its people were destroyed. As for the mujahedeen that this conflict created, they took on a life of their own, and have now spread throughout the Muslim world and are apparently in cells everywhere. Having defeated what they called Soviet imperialism, they have now turned their sights on what they perceive to be American imperialism.
<http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/v35/v35_6jr.htm> *****
That sounds about right to me. -- Yoshie
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