Trotskyist Bulletin No. 8
AFGHANISTAN & THE LEFT
Document 2c.9
Report From Heroic Jalalabad: Front Line Afghanistan Crush
CIAs Mujahedin
Reprinted from Workers Vanguard, No. 482, 21 July
1989
From Our Correspondent in Afghanistan
JALALABAD, July 7Thousands of people thronged through the
streets of this revitalized city today to celebrate an important military
victory over the ClAs mujahedin (holy warriors). Two days ago, the
armed forces of the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)
government, spearheaded by an armored Special Guard unit and heavily backed by
the Air Force, forced the counterrevolutionaries to pull back to positions they
occupied before the March offensive against Jalalabad.
Not only has the months-long bitter siege been broken, but
Jalalabad and the surrounding parts of Nangarhar Province of which it is the
capital are once again secure from the threat of rocket attacks. The rout of
the mujahedin was so sweeping that the initial impulse of advance
elements of the armored unit was to roll all the way up to Torkham, on the
border with Pakistan. But the order came from the High Command to consolidate
their positions before advancing further.
This reporter was with the first group of journalists to visit
Jalalabad since May, and only the second visit since the mujahedin siege
began in March. It was particularly moving to be here on behalf of the
international campaign of humanitarian assistance conducted by the Partisan
Defense Committee and fraternal legal and social defense organizations in other
countries which raised over $42,000 to aid the civilian victims of the siege.
The English-language Kabul Times (3 July) and the Dari-language
Payam (2 July) had both carried articles reporting on a message of
acknowledgment from the Nangarhar Province Defence Council to the PDC. Part of
the message quoted by the Kabul Times read:
The Defence Council of Nangarhar Province
representing all the PDPA members, social organizations and the peaceloving
people of Nangarhar, cordially thank you and express gratitude for the
assistance extended by you, assuring you honourable friends that it is a must
that we would triumph, for we are struggling for a just right.
The front has now been pushed back to Samarkhel, some 12-15
kilometers further east, a key fortified outpost that was the scene of heavy
fighting in March and again now. We were taken by bus to Samarkhel. A few
kilometers away, we could see a tank firing shell after shell over a ridge,
along which some Afghan soldiers were advancing. This ridge is the
mujahedins only natural defense line for many miles, but there was
no sign that they were holding their own or fighting back.
The officers and soldiers of the Special Guard unit proudly showed
us around, describing the weapons captured, while warning us to stick to the
areas that have already been cleared of minesi.e., where a tank tread has
left its signature. We could see the damaged buildings of the
housing complex, the school and the shop, and visit the big diesel power
station.
A City of Determination
At the head of the line of march of todays victory
celebration was an armored car atop which rode our team of journalists.
Following the military and civilian leaders of the city came dozens of
multicolored banners and Afghan national flags and some five to ten thousand
residents of Jalalabad. People were everywhere in the streets. There was not a
sign of fear, but rather an evident determination which exploded in loud chants
of Afghanistan Zindabad! (Long Live Afghanistan) and Marg ya
Watan (Death or Country) that punctuated the march throughout. Young and
old, women and menmany carrying their weaponsMuslims, Sikhs and
Hindus joined together in this march from Jamhuriat Garden to Pashtoonistan
Square.
After listening to a speech by Lt. Gen. Manookay Mangal, governor
and chairman of the Defence Council of Nangarhar Province, the participants
adopted a resolution expressing all-out solidarity with the victorious
and heroic armed forces in the defence of homeland, independence, territorial
integrity and national sovereignty of the country. The roofs of the
mainly two-story houses along the route of the march were guarded by young
militiamen (some appeared to be no older than 13), their Kalashnikovs slung
over their shoulders looking almost too big for them.
From the helicopter and from the road, it was clear that
Jalalabad, once renowned as a tourist resort for its beauty and greenery, is a
wounded city, whose scars will take a long time to heal. The ravages of the
brutal war against the population can be seen in torn walls, damaged houses,
smashed window-panes and roads full of ditches and debris. Between March and
July, 973 houses were damaged along with 150 government buildings, shops and
markets, mosques and temples. Many of the houses are made of mud
bricksmaking them relatively easy to rebuildand the people have
been working hard at repairing them.
The airport, some five kilometers to the east of the city, shows
all the signs of the fierce battle that went on around and for it in March and
April: hangars blown apart, the airstrip damaged, remains of jeeps and
helicopters lying around, the control tower heavily damaged. Its clear
that there has been no time to care for the niceties of appearance: the airport
is functional again and thats enough.
The civilian population has suffered terribly: 1,993 injured and
1,002 killed, half of them children. On the single day of March 8, the
mujahedin cutthroats, bankrolled by the Pakistani ISI [Inter-Service
Intelligence] and the CIA, bombarded Jalalabad with 5,000 rockets. But they did
not succeed in overwhelming its heroic defenders.
At the Central Hotel we met some of the civilian victims of these
rocket attacks. Among them was Hayatullah, aged 14, a bright kid who lost his
right leg in February. He had been afraid of rockets, he said. When one hit his
home in the eastern district of Jalalabad, a brother was killed and another
lost his leg. Hayatullah was a student at the time and wanted to become a
teacher. With the stern look of a young man who had to grow up a lot faster
than kids his age in luckier parts of the world, he asserted his resolve to
complete his studies, because he very much wants to teach small
children. When asked how he felt about those who did this to him, he
replied, They should all be eliminated, adding that
America is ultimately responsible as the country that supplies the
rockets.
An Internationalist Struggle
Toward the end of our eight-hour stay in Jalalabad we met the
governor. After the deputy governor, who was accompanying the team of
journalists, learned that this reporter was a representative of the PDC
campaign, he made it known to the governor. When we entered the room for the
press conference, Lt. Gen. Mangal shook hands with every reporter, but embraced
me enthusiastically, saying Ah, Partisan.
A doctor by profession, the 41-year-old former chief of political
affairs of the interior ministry in Kabul has been governor of this crucial
border province for six months. He said that Pakistani militarists and
the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad decided to declare war on Jalalabad on the 6th
of March. The reactionarieswith a total of 40,000 troops, including
two Pakistani tank battalions and 120 units of reactive
artillerywere supposed to occupy Jalalabad in 72 hours; planes were
ready in Peshawar to bring the mujahedin provisional
government onto Afghan territory. But they could not occupy the
city, Lt. Gen. Mangal declared proudly. Nangarhar men and women
fought valiantly, including PDPA members as well as the military, he
added. The Air Force played a major role in the defeat of the attackers.
I asked the governor if the defenders and people of Jalalabad are
aware that in many countries of the world, working people are following their
struggle with extreme concern. Certainly, he replied, adding that
the struggle of the Afghan people is an internationalist struggle.
Mangal mentioned specifically Pakistans plan to dismember Afghanistan and
to impose a government that would join with Pakistan and Turkey in a new
CENTO anti-Soviet and anti-Indian U.S.-dominated alliance. He again
thanked the PDC for our efforts in support of the people of Jalalabad. The
international aid campaign clearly boosted morale in Jalalabad. The message
from the Defence Council said, Your great and humane move is so
noteworthy that no devilish eyes can dare see it.
In the course of these three months of fighting, the defenders of
Jalalabad had lost some 800 killed. But using a combination of high-level
bombing by converted propeller-driven Antonov AN-l2 cargo planeswhich can
fly above the range of the U.S.-supplied Stinger missilesand long-range
SCUD missiles fired from the Kabul area, the Afghan armed forces have inflicted
far heavier losses on the enemy. At a July 3 press conference in Kabul, Gen.
Alumi, head of the military section of the PDPA and secretary of the Supreme
Defence Council, explained that the counterrevolutionaries have taken more
casualties between March and June than in any previous two years of
fighting taken together. He gave a figure of 35,000 mujahedin
casualties (including 3,000 Pakistanis) since the signing of the Geneva
agreement in 1988.
Bakhtar News Agency (5 July), reporting a meeting between bereaved
Afghan mothers and a delegation of Pakistani journalists, quoted one mother
saying: We were pleased with the signing of the Geneva accords, we
thought that in the light of these agreements war in the Republic of
Afghanistan could be stopped.... But unfortunately after the signing of the
accords, war in the Republic of Afghanistan has further intensified. In
fact, Gorbachevs pullout has served only to embolden the imperialists and
their cutthroats.
The Soviet intervention in 1979 was mandated by defense of the
gains of the 1917 October Revolution and opened up the prospect of extending
those gains to Afghanistan; that is why the international Spartacist tendency,
now the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), proclaimed
Hail Red Army in Afghanistan! After the Soviet withdrawal,
Washington and Islamabad thought the instant the Soviet troops pulled out, the
Afghan government would crumble. They have been proved wrong by the fighting
valor of the Afghan people.
Meanwhile, the PDPAs policy of national
reconciliation aims at luring the reactionaries into a coalition. Kabul
papers regularly report agreements with regional mujahedin commanders,
effectively leaving them in control of their fiefdoms. The day after
Payam reported on the internationalist aid campaign by the PDC, it
carried a speech by the foreign minister headlined, Except a Political
SettlementNo Other Way Exists for Putting an End to War in
Afghanistan.
But to put an end to the imperialist-backed war against social
progress requires rooting outnot conciliatingentrenched feudal and
capitalist reaction through workers revolution. In the extremely backward
conditions of Afghanistan, the tiny industrial proletariat does not have the
weight to effect a fundamental transformation of society. But next door in
Bhuttos Pakistan, the home base for the CIAs mujahedin,
conditions for social revolution are brewing, with national minorities in
turmoil and the regime divided. In Iran, the Islamic theocracy is now headless
and the population sick of a decade of bloody war and domestic terror.
Jalalabad besieged was the focal point of imperialisms
jihad (holy war) against social progress and the Soviet Union. Jalalabad
victorious can inspire revolutionary struggle throughout the region, from India
to Turkey. That requires above all the program of Leninist internationalism,
the banner of the International Communist League. |