Document 2c.2

Letter to Paris

The following is the letter with which James Robertson initiated the international Spartacist tendency’s projected “International Brigade” for Afghanistan in 1989. This letter was originally published in the iSt’s International Discussion Bulletin No. 19, March 1989.

(fax) by Jim
6 February 1989

To: Paris

See if appropriate Afghan embassy interested in International Brigade to be flown in via India.

Down with the Mullahs!
War to the Death!

Now is the winter of our discontent

Jim

Plan to use the youthful scum of the left Stalinists, hard Trotskyists, radical skinheads and the odd witless Aussie and embittered Iranian émigrés—the Mad Marx Brigade.

To list add: Guevarist (i.e., Auguste Blanquists and Tukhachevskyites). Expect from government: military direction and some food. Brigade will get own weapons by using rocks, sawed-off shotguns and fire-hardened spears, working nights. Recruit especially in Italy and Latin America but from all over. “Kiss your ass goodbye, Long Live Communism!”

No pay just expenses.