The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock and the Washington Post (Simon & Schuster: New York, 2021)
Afghanistan was thrust into the international media spotlight and public consciousness in August, when the United States and its coalition partners fled the country as the Taliban walked into the presidential palace, establishing itself as the ruling authority. While Afghanistan may finally be free of outside military occupation, Afghans are still suffering the deadly consequences of 40 years of U.S.-led subversion and war. Today, tens of millions of mostly poor and rural Afghans are at risk of dying due to lack of food, with the United Nations estimating 97 percent of people could be below the poverty line by next month. This is all largely a result of international sanctions and the United States freezing Afghanistan’s sovereign assets.
Despite these dire conditions, however, U.S. media outlets have moved on from Afghanistan after declaring it a colossal “failure” and publishing military and government officials’ memoirs and accounts of “lessons learned.” Encapsulating this kind of shortsighted thinking is long-time Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock’s first book, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. While the author delivers a thorough chronological history of the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan from the U.S. perspective, he largely fails to criticize the war aside from what has already been known for the entire history of this settler-colony: That its ruling military and government officials lie in pursuit of their narrow self-interests.
Of course, with a title as such, the book has received many comparisons to the Pentagon Papers, the leaked reports on the U.S. war on Vietnam that the New York Times published in 1971. Beyond the title of the book, Whitlock is clearly inspired by what has often been lauded as a great show of strength for the U.S. “free press”: Revealing systemic lies the highest ranking U.S. government and military officials have told throughout a war that had no clear objectives. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
If the reader is aware of this history, along with the other U.S.-waged or -backed wars across the globe today—in places like Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and now Ukraine—much of what is presented as revelatory may seem obvious. This is not to take away from the importance of the “Afghanistan Papers,” the nearly 10,000 pages of once-classified material, made publicly available courtesy of Whitlock and the Washington Post. Nor is it to deride the significance of the injustices that the U.S. government and military have inflicted upon Afghanistan and the region. Rather, it is to make the point that while the elites in Washington continue to hold much of the world hostage in what’s shaping up to be the most violent imperial decline in history—with nuclear ramifications that could bring about an end to life as we know it—this is a story that is becoming all too familiar.
That politics in the United States is a game for the elite—who are willing to do and say anything to maintain their power—is more common knowledge than Whitlock may think. This is evident with that only one-quarter of people in the United States say they trust the government. With this in mind, many readers will not be surprised to learn the Pentagon fabricated stories to justify the long war in Afghanistan. That military commanders made grandiose claims of the “progress” they were making on the battlefield. That consecutive White House administrations allowed for cycles of escalations and different iterations of the war to continue. And that elected officials—both Democrats and Republicans—have always come together at times of apparent bitter divides to direct the public’s attention away from such wars.
With that said, Whitlock misses an important opportunity to specify that—despite this seemingly impenetrable web of lies, deceit and deception—it is not so much the fault of the U.S. public for not being more aware. A majority are poor or working class, an entirely different class to Whitlock’s own. Nor is it that they are a docile group of sheep that can persistently be misled, as he frequently makes it seem. In fact, the vast majority of the U.S. public, struggling to make ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck, seem acutely aware of the levels of sophistication to which the U.S. government will go to pursue the narrow material interests of an elite few in Washington.
The issue does not lie in ignorance, which—following Whitlock’s logic—is something this book should have addressed. What prevents people from stopping the next U.S.-waged war is the same capitalist dictatorship in Washington that everyday Afghans have been made to bear for 40 years. It is the same class leading the war on poor and working-class people in the United States, marring any chance of popular democratic action against such wars.
Whitlock is clear that with the source material he relied on to craft his narrative, the book is by no means a definitive history of the war. Regardless, this narrow framework has the effect of placing Afghanistan—along with its rich history, culture and people—in a vacuum. In spite of the book’s thoroughness and detail, by the book’s final chapter, a reader with no prior knowledge of Afghanistan would be left with much to learn of the ongoing war, if economic sanctions are considered the next phase of the U.S. war on Afghanistan.
While Whitlock and the Washington Post have clearly gone to great lengths to make thousands of pages of once-classified Pentagon documents not only public, but digestible to the average reader, an important connection that could have further raised the reader’s consciousness was missed. Since it’s a story that’s been told before, what could possibly be missing from what has been lauded as the “definitive U.S. history” of the war?
By the book’s end, the average reader is likely to be left wondering why so many government and military officials were committed to lying about the justifications for the war and how it was actually playing out on the ground. What could have possibly been the driving force behind so many cover-ups and false narratives throughout? Could it be that the answer—either brushed aside or outright ignored by Whitlock and the Washington Post—has much to do with profit? Ultimately, Whitlock fails to answer the why question of the war, missing a crucial opportunity to provide a further clarity.
But, then again, that was not the book Whitlock set out to write. He delivers what has come to be expected from highly paid journalists at privately owned newspapers: A misleading narrative that U.S.-waged wars like those in Vietnam and Afghanistan only end when journalists like himself decide to put pen to paper. And not when the people living there—Vietnamese and Afghans alike—have no choice but to fight back.
This book is a vital resource that thoroughly details the atrocities U.S. government and military officials knew they were committing—and seemingly got away with—throughout the war on Afghanistan. Whitlock and the Washington Post certainly do not deserve condemnation for trying. But one can only hope that as conditions worsen for the poor in Afghanistan and the United States alike, Whitlock and the Washington Post will become stronger, more formidable opponents to future U.S.-waged wars. However, readers should be warned: Do not bet on that.
Patterson Deppen serves on the editorial board at E-International Relations, where he is editor for student essays. He is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network. His writing has appeared in TomDispatch, The Nation, The Progressive, E-International Relations and other outlets.
SPEAKERS
Dr. Fred M’Membe, Sean Blackmon, Jacqueline Luqman (Toward Freedom board member)
Sean Blackmon: We’re happy to be joined for this conversation today by Dr. Fred M’Membe, president of the Socialist Party of Zambia. Dr. M’Membe, thanks so much for joining us.
Dr. Fred M’Membe: Thank you very much for inviting me on your show.
Sean Blackmon: Absolutely. And, Doctor, of course, we’ve been following on the show very closely the rapidly escalating war in Ukraine, this proxy war between U.S./NATO forces and Russia. And we’ve been keeping a close eye on the international response to this war, as you know, the U.S. and the West, its allies and junior partners, you know, try to present this image as if, you know, the whole international community is sort of a siding with them in condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of this year. But I feel like once you take a closer look at how some of these opinions and perspectives from different governments are really playing out, I think the picture is a bit more complicated. Now. Back in March, in the United Nations there was a debate over resolution fundamentally to condemn Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. And within that vote, 35 countries abstained from it, including 17 member states of the African Union. And there have also been leaders like the Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, that have not necessarily uh, jumped on the western bandwagon with this as well. And so we wanted to bring you want to sort of discuss this, because, from your perspective, obviously, you’re there in Zambia a country in a southern Africa, and I’m just wondering why you think we’ve seen these kinds of responses from some of these different African governments towards the war in Ukraine. And what do you think it says about the reality of geopolitics right now.
Dr. Fred M’Membe: First, let me say, it is very important to understand that no war is good. It is impossible not to be moved by the outrageousness of warfare. They grow some fears of civilians who are trapped between choices that are not their own, but was make very complicated historical processes that appear to be simple. The war in Ukraine is not merely about NATO, or about ethnicity. It is about many things. Every war must end at some point. And the diplomas must restart must come in. Africa and the Russian people share a history of struggle. When the African people were fighting for their independence for their liberation, those who are condemning Russia today, we are not with them [then]. They were on the other side. They never took our site. Not that our side was wrong. Our side was right. But they never took our side. They took the side of the colonialists. They took the side of the side of apartheid, they took their side of racist superiority against the forces of liberation, African liberation. We’ll never forget that. They want us to forget that, but it’s not easy to forget that. Because it’s not very long ago. Zimbabwe only became independent in 1980. Namibia only became independent in 1990. This is not very long ago, in terms of historical processes. We know who stood with the apartheid regime in South Africa. We know who stood with the racist regime in Rhodesia, now, Zimbabwe. We know who sided with the colonialists in Angola, in Mozambique, in the Cape Verde. We know all these things. So the African people have a sense of history as well. It’s not possible for Africans to condemn Russia, given where we are coming from together. And the Russian war is a complicated process. Let’s not be simplistic about it, Let’s understand where this process is coming from. Since 1990, there has been an attempt to expand the NATO forces in Eastern Europe, up to Russia. There was some cooperation, initially, even from Russia itself, under Boris Yeltsin, there was some engagement. But all that has changed. And it is important to understand that long history and the Africans understand that. We are able to analyze things for ourselves, we are able to see things for ourselves, we are able to come to our own conclusions. And also we understand the decisions and actions of our enemies, and also the decisions and actions of our friends. We are even able to understand the mistakes of our friends, and to separate them or single them out to identify them from the actions and decisions of our enemies. We know who our friends are. The Russian people have stood on our side. Russia has never had colonies in Africa—that must be understood. Despite helping to liberate us, Russia has never taken control of any African country. Russia has never colonized any country that they helped to liberate. Russia has not exploited an African country. We do not know of any country in Africa that can claim it was a colony of Russia, [claim that] it has been exploited and humiliated by Russia. This history is very clear to us. And this is not easy for us to be swayed by propaganda against Russia. We don’t want the war in Ukraine to continue as Africans. War is bad. War is not good for the poor. War is not good for the workers. War in itself is a crime. War produces crimes. Peace must always be a priority. We Africans want the war in Ukraine to end. But that won’t to end without taking into account the security concerns of Russia, and indeed, the security concerns of Ukraine itself. And even the security concerns of Europe itself. It shouldn’t be the security of one section, or one region or one country, the security of all must be considered. The security of Ukraine must be considered, the security of Russia must be considered. And indeed the security of Europe. Emphasizing on just one side of the equation, it won’t work. You cannot have security for Europe, you cannot have security for Ukraine without taking into account the security concerns of Russia. Similarly, you cannot have the security concerns of Russia addressed without taking into account the security concerns of Ukraine, the security concerns of Europe. We all need our security. As we pursue our own security interests, we also must take into account the security concerns of others. This is what is lacking in the issue of Ukraine. Russia has legitimate security concerns. And it just didn’t walk into Ukraine. From 2004, they have been actively pursuing these issues. But instead of addressing them, the opposite has happened. NATO has been expanding its lines, NATO has been trying to consolidate its positions in Eastern Europe, up to the Russian border. What did you expect Russia to do, sit idle and watch? Its security concerns not being addressed? Its security being violated? Its security being threatened? Would the USA or Europe accept that situation? Who in the world would accept that to happen?
Jacqueline Luqman: You know, what you just said that that brief encapsulation of the history of solidarity really, that the Russian people and that the Russian government has had with the African liberation struggles over the decades is so important, I think to this conversation, because I think in some ways, we in the United States, even though we who are our Pan Africanist, understand and know a little bit of that history, most people do not so most people don’t understand and don’t know, they’re ignorant of the struggle against colonialism on the African continent. So they’re ignorant of the abuses, and they’re ignorant of their relationship with Russia and the continent. And in that context, do you think that the it’s that ignorance of this relationship that you just explained, that makes it difficult for us in the United States to understand why African nations are refused to condemn Russia and also why we have a difficult time, pulling back from literally cheering this war to continue In order to “support” Ukraine, as our government tells us, without having any consideration for the lives of the people who are caught in the middle of this war, as you said, who do who did not choose it, and who did not ask for it, most of whom are working class and poor people on the continent of Africa.
Dr. Fred M’Membe: Sometimes, it’s not only the issue of ignorance, sometimes the issue of arrogance, and the problem sometimes even racist attitudes. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. What’s good for America is also good for others. America would not tolerate what it wants Russia to tolerate on its borders. If Russia was to move into Mexico today or into Canada, and they do what the Americans and the Europeans are trying to do in Ukraine, I don’t think they would tolerate that. We have the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Cuba is 90 miles away from Florida. But when the Soviet Union placed missiles there, there was a big crisis, which had to be resolved amicably. Why should Russia feel secure? With Ukraine, becoming a NATO member, and placing missiles on his border? These are issues that need to be guaranteed. What we need is adherence to the Minsk agreements. What is needed is security guarantees for Russia and Ukraine, which would also require Europe to develop an independent relationship with Russia that is not shaped by U.S. interests. There will also be need to have a reversal of Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist laws, and they return it to a much more plurinational… national compact. If in some sense negotiations and agreements regarding these essential matters do not materialize, it is likely that the dangerous weapons will face each other across the divides. And additional countries may be drawn into this conflict with a potential to spiral out of control. We don’t want this conflict to get out of control. There is a need for negotiations to end this war. And the negotiations, in our view center around the three principal issues. They’re returning to the Minsk agreements, security guarantees for Russia and Ukraine, reversal of ultra-traditionalist laws. This is not demanding too much. Of course, these are not simple issues. But there are issues that need to be addressed.
Sean Blackmon: For sure. And you know, last question, Dr. M’Membe is, you know, we’re in a time from the standpoint of a U.S. imperialism, as it sees itself engaging in great power conflict, both with Russia and China and the African continent seems like, it’s sort of poised to become a real battlefield for this new Cold War. And so, for the African continent for all of its linguistic and cultural and ethnic and geographic diversity, how do you see sort of the role of the continent in the coming period as we continue to see efforts to, you know, bring about a world order that isn’t controlled from Washington.
Dr. Fred M’Membe: For our diversity, for the difference [uninteligible] among us, one thing that we all need is peace. We need peace to develop, we need peace to move people out of poverty. We don’t want to be drawn in[to] any Cold War, or any other war. We don’t want war. We have had enough. We have been humiliated for over 600 years. We were hunted as slaves traded as slaves. We were colonized. We moved from classical colonialism, neocolonialism. All these humiliating things. We have had enough of our torture, we have have had enough crucifixion. It’s time for Africa also to have its resurrection. And that resurrection cannot come under a Cold War. That’s why our position is of non-alignment. We have the right to pursue our own interests, while others also have the right to pursue their own interests. But one thing that is in common is we need a peaceful world. All our people need a peaceful world. The Americans need to live in peace, the Europeans need to live in peace. The Africans need peace. The Russians need peace, all need peace. Everything that threatens peace threatens all of us. It threatens our peaceful existence here. And it also threatens our progress. War is destructive. It destroys wealth. It destroys production, it increases poverty, it increases despair. It brings suffering it brings pain. We don’t need this. We have had enough. We want to develop and developing peace. And we don’t want to be shackled to wars that are not ours. These are not wars that are ours or benefit us. But we are there to try and offer solutions because every war, no matter how small it is, it has got ripple effects. It affects not only the primary people involved in it, but there are also secondary implications. We don’t want war.
Sean Blackmon: Absolutely. Well, we thank you so much, Dr. M’Membe, for joining us today. We’re going to leave it there and move to a break here on “By Any Means Necessary
on Radio Sputnik in Washington, D.C.
The United Nations General Assembly in September 2022 / credit: United Nations
Editor’s Note: The following represents the writers’ analysis.
We have spent the past week reading and listening to speeches by world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York. Most of them condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a violation of the UN Charter and a serious setback for the peaceful world order that is the UN’s founding and defining principle.
But what has not been reported in the United States is that leaders from 66 countries, mainly from the Global South, also used their General Assembly speeches to call urgently for diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine through peaceful negotiations, as the UN Charter requires. We have compiled excerpts from the speeches of all 66 countries to show the breadth and depth of their appeals, and we highlight a few of them here.
African leaders echoed one of the first speakers, Macky Sall, the president of Senegal, who also spoke in his capacity as the current chairman of the African Union when he said, “We call for de-escalation and a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, as well as for a negotiated solution, to avoid the catastrophic risk of a potentially global conflict.”
While NATO and EU countries have rejected peace negotiations, and U.S. and U.K. leaders have actively undermined them, five European countries—Hungary, Malta, Portugal, San Marino and the Vatican—joined the calls for peace at the General Assembly.
The peace caucus also includes many of the small countries that have the most to lose from the failure of the UN system revealed by recent wars in Ukraine and West Asia, and who have the most to gain by strengthening the UN and enforcing the UN Charter to protect the weak and restrain the powerful.
Philip Pierre, the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, a small island state in the Caribbean, told the General Assembly,
“Articles 2 and 33 of the UN Charter are unambiguous in binding Member States to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state and to negotiate and settle all international disputes by peaceful means.…We therefore call upon all parties involved to immediately end the conflict in Ukraine, by undertaking immediate negotiations to permanently settle all disputes in accordance with the principles of the United Nations.”
Global South leaders lamented the breakdown of the UN system, not just in the war in Ukraine but throughout decades of war and economic coercion by the United States and its allies. President Jose Ramos-Horta of Timor-Leste directly challenged the West’s double standards, telling Western countries,
“They should pause for a moment to reflect on the glaring contrast in their response to the wars elsewhere where women and children have died by the thousands from wars and starvation. The response to our beloved Secretary-General’s cries for help in these situations have not met with equal compassion. As countries in the Global South, we see double standards. Our public opinion does not see the Ukraine war the same way it is seen in the North.”
Many leaders called urgently for an end to the war in Ukraine before it escalates into a nuclear war that would kill billions of people and end human civilization as we know it. The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, warned,
“… The war in Ukraine not only undermines the nuclear non-proliferation regime, but also presents us with the danger of nuclear devastation, either through escalation or accident … To avoid a nuclear disaster, it is vital that there be serious engagement to find a peaceful outcome to the conflict.”
Others described the economic impacts already depriving their people of food and basic necessities, and called on all sides, including Ukraine’s Western backers, to return to the negotiating table before the war’s impacts escalate into multiple humanitarian disasters across the Global South. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh told the Assembly,
“We want the end of the Russia-Ukraine war. Due to sanctions and counter-sanctions … the entire mankind, including women and children, is punished. Its impact does not remain confined to one country, rather it puts the lives and livelihoods of the people of all nations in greater risk, and infringes their human rights. People are deprived of food, shelter, healthcare and education. Children suffer the most in particular. Their future sinks into darkness.
My urge to the conscience of the world—stop the arms race, stop the war and sanctions. Ensure food, education, healthcare and security of the children. Establish peace.”
Turkey, Mexico and Thailand each offered their own approaches to restarting peace negotiations, while Sheikh Al-Thani, the Amir of Qatar, succinctly explained that delaying negotiations will only bring more death and suffering:
“We are fully aware of the complexities of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and the international and global dimension to this crisis. However, we still call for an immediate ceasefire and a peaceful settlement, because this is ultimately what will happen regardless of how long this conflict will go on for. Perpetuating the crisis will not change this result. It will only increase the number of casualties, and it will increase the disastrous repercussions on Europe, Russia and the global economy.”
Responding to Western pressure on the Global South to actively support Ukraine’s war effort, India’s Foreign Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, claimed the moral high ground and championed diplomacy,
“As the Ukraine conflict continues to rage, we are often asked whose side we are on. And our answer, each time, is straight and honest. India is on the side of peace and will remain firmly there. We are on the side that respects the UN Charter and its founding principles. We are on the side that calls for dialogue and diplomacy as the only way out. We are on the side of those struggling to make ends meet, even as they stare at escalating costs of food, fuel and fertilizers.
It is therefore in our collective interest to work constructively, both within the United Nations and outside, in finding an early resolution to this conflict.”
One of the most passionate and eloquent speeches was delivered by Congolese Foreign Minister Jean-Claude Gakosso, who summarized the thoughts of many, and appealed directly to Russia and Ukraine—in Russian!
“Because of the considerable risk of a nuclear disaster for the entire planet, not only those involved in this conflict but also those foreign powers who could influence events by calming them down, should all temper their zeal. They must stop fanning the flames and they must turn their backs on this type of vanity of the powerful which has so far closed the door to dialogue.
Under the auspices of the United Nations, we must all commit without delay to peace negotiations – just, sincere and equitable negotiations. After Waterloo, we know that since the Vienna Congress, all wars finish around the table of negotiation.
The world urgently needs these negotiations to prevent the current confrontations—which are already so devastating—to prevent them from going even further and pushing humanity into what could be an irredeemable cataclysm, a widespread nuclear war beyond the control of the great powers themselves—the war, about which Einstein, the great atomic theorist, said that it would be the last battle that humans would fight on Earth.
Nelson Mandela, a man of eternal forgiveness, said that peace is a long road, but it has no alternative, it has no price. In reality, the Russians and Ukrainians have no other choice but to take this path, the path of peace.
Moreover, we too should go with them, because we must throughout the world be legions working together in solidarity, and we must be able to impose the unconditional option of peace on the war lobbies.
(Next three paragraphs in Russian)
Now I wish to be direct, and directly address my dear Russian and Ukrainian friends.
Too much blood has been spilled – the sacred blood of your sweet children. It’s time to stop this mass destruction. It’s time to stop this war. The entire world is watching you. It’s time to fight for life, the same way that you courageously and selflessly fought together against the Nazis during World War Two, in particular in Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin.
Think about the youth of your two countries. Think about the fate of your future generations. The time has come to fight for peace, to fight for them. Please give peace a real chance, today, before it is too late for us all. I humbly ask this of you.”
At the end of the debate on September 26, Csaba Korosi, the president of the General Assembly, acknowledged in his closing statement that ending the war in Ukraine was one of the main messages “reverberating through the Hall” at this year’s General Assembly.
You can read here Korosi’s closing statement and all the calls for peace he was referring to.
And if you want to join the “legions working together in solidarity… to impose the unconditional option of peace on the war lobbies,” as Jean-Claude Gakosso said, you can learn more at peaceinukraine.org.
Afghan women line up at a World Food Program distribution point / credit: United Nations photo licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Editor’s Note: This article is the first in a series Toward Freedom has launched to examine the real impact and reasons for U.S. “humanitarian interventions.”
From the U.S. military intervention launched under the banner of democracy and human rights to restored warlords and the resuscitated Taliban regime, Afghan women have never stopped fighting for their rights.
When Taliban forces entered Kabul on August 15, appearing to have taken control of Afghanistan two weeks before the United States was set to complete its troop withdrawal, shock and fear for women’s fate under the Islamist group’s repressive rule quickly multiplied inside the country and globally.
After nearly 20 years of a U.S.-led coalition’s presence, a costly two-decade war, the very force the United States had tried to push out of power, in the name of its “War on Terror,” took over again. This time it occurred with stunning rapidity, in the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden’s hasty, chaotic military withdrawal.
With the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals were abandoned at the mercy of the Taliban, amid concern the fundamentalist movement would re-impose its hard-line interpretation of Islamic law on women and girls.
But securing women’s rights was used from the beginning to justify the U.S. military intervention. The Biden administration’s irresponsible pull-out in tandem with the swift, untroubled Taliban return speaks volumes about Washington’s lack of interest to secure respect for human rights and improve women’s lives. Humanitarian interventions have been used to deploy U.S. troops and drones in Iraq, Libya, Syria and other countries. As a consequence, 1 million people have been killed and an estimated 38 million have been forced to become refugees.
Condemning Humanitarian Interventions
The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), the oldest feminist organization in Afghanistan, stated in its response to the Taliban takeover: “It is a joke to say values like ‘women’s rights,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘nation-building,’ etc., were part of the U.S./NATO aims in Afghanistan!”
On International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2003, Afghan women of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) marched to the UN headquarters in Islamabad, Pakistan. The sign states in Persian: “Down with the Northern Alliance, power to the Afghan people!” / credit: RAWA
The women’s association mentioned the United States’ geostrategic motives for its invasion, namely causing regional instability to encircle its rival powers, China and Russia in particular, and to undermine their economies via regional wars.
“Right from the start, RAWA members have been saying that freedom can’t be brought through bombs, war and violence,” Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission (AWM), a U.S.-based organization that funds RAWA’s work, told Toward Freedom. “How can they liberate women while they’re killing their husbands, brothers and fathers?”
Afghan women have long known that the U.S.-staged war on terrorism—and any foreign meddling—was not going to make their country safer. Women took the brunt of the backlash of war, military invasion and, again, today’s uncertain aftermath.
“[Afghan women] have always rejected outside interference, and maintained that Afghans need to fight for their freedom from inside,” Kolhatkar said.
For decades, active women have been at the forefront of opposing fundamentalism, warlordism and imperialism in Afghanistan.
Leading political activist and human-rights advocate Malalai Joya publicly denounced the presence of warlords and war criminals in the Afghan parliament in 2003 while serving as a member of parliament (MP), which resulted in her dismissal. An outspoken critic of the United States and NATO, she has continued to denounce the 20-year U.S./Western occupation. She has condemned U.S.-led drone attacks and bombings, clandestine raids carried out by U.S. and Afghan special forces into civilian homes, all of which have killed thousands of Afghans.
Between 2001 and 2020, more than 46,000 civilians were killed and 5.9 million Afghans displaced as a result of the war’s ongoing violence.
U.S. Brings Taliban Back to Power
Activists at the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), an NGO launched in the mid-1990s, have criticized the United States for allegedly bribing and empowering warlords, then resuscitating the Taliban’s power in the 2020 U.S.-led negotiations in Doha, which translated into replacing one fundamentalist regime in Afghanistan with another.
“I do not understand the United States for undoing and now redoing the Taliban in Afghanistan, whose ruling will affect women’s lives the most, which will be ruined yet again,” prominent human-rights activist Mahbooba Seraj, member of AWN, said in a interview with TRT World.
Talking to Toward Freedom, Alia Rasoully, an Afghan based in the United States who founded WISE Afghanistan, an organization that aims to provide women access to health and education, underlined how the Doha talks were conducted solely in the United States’ interest. She said many Afghans are not aware of the agreement’s details.
“Afghan women feel betrayed,” Rasoully said. “Although some women were included in the negotiations, none of their demands for basic human and Islamic rights are being met today.”
On April 28, 2003—known as the Black Day to commemorate the day the Taliban seized Kabul in 1992—other Afghan organizations joined RAWA in a demonstration / credit: RAWA
Spozhmay Maseed, a U.S.-based Afghan rights activist, deplored the seemingly unconcerned U.S. pull-out. “It was shocking to everyone,” she told Toward Freedom. “U.S. forces were combating terrorists for 20 years, today they’re dealing with them. Who were they fighting then? What was that fight for?”
RAWA member Salma, whose real name must be concealed to protect her security, relayed similar concerns to Toward Freedom.
“The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 was a military operation orchestrated by the CIA that brought in Northern Alliance puppet leaders, who are as extremist and misogynist as the Taliban, and painted them as ‘democratic’ and ‘liberal,’” she said.
“What’s the result of these 20 years?” Salma asked. “[The United States] spent more than $2 trillion on the war to bring back the same Taliban, and it turned the country into a corrupt, drug-mafia and unsafe place, especially for women.”
The façade of democracy the United States had poured trillions of dollars into maintaining was lifted when former President Ashraf Ghani abandoned the presidential palace on August 15 by reportedly dashing onto a helicopter with close to $200 million in tow.
“How breakable that ‘democracy’ was, and how rotten the U.S.-backed puppet government was!” Salma asserted.
The Work of RAWA
On its website, RAWA has documented through its reports, photos and videos the horrific conditions facing Afghan women at the hands of the mujahideen and the Taliban, as well as the destruction and bloodshed during the U.S. occupation, which was rarely reported in the media.
“This indigenous women’s movement had long been trying to draw international attention to the atrocities against their people, in particular the ultra-woman-hating acts they were witnessing,” AWM’s Kolhatkar stressed. “It was only after September 11, when the world discovered there were terrible things happening to women in Afghanistan.”
Unlike many other Afghans, RAWA members have stayed, striving to give voice to the deprived women of Afghanistan in the struggle for women’s rights.
RAWA, which was established in 1977 as an independent political organization of Afghan women struggling for women’s rights, is driven by the belief that only a democratic, secular government can ensure security, independence and equality among Afghan people. It became involved in the struggle for resistance following the Soviet intervention called for by the then-socialist government of Afghanistan in 1979. Over the last four decades, RAWA spoke out against the anti-Soviet resistance (known as mujahideen) in the 1980s, fought against the Taliban regime in the mid-1990s, denounced the role of the Pakistani state in creating the Taliban and has rejected the U.S. occupation of the last 20 years.
The women’s organization has been involved in various social and political activities to include literacy classes, schools for girls and boys in villages and remote areas, health and income-generation projects for women to help them financially, and political agitation. It has also worked with refugee Afghan women and children in Pakistan, running nursing, literacy and vocational training courses. In 1981, it launched a bilingual magazine in Persian and Pashto, Payam-e-Zan (Woman’s Message), spreading social and political awareness among Afghan women.
Due to its pro-democracy, pro-secularist and anti-fundamentalist stance, RAWA has always operated as a clandestine organization, including in the last two decades under the U.S. occupation and the so-called “democratic government,” which it never recognized.
Using pseudonyms, concealing their identities, turning their homes into office spaces, often changing locations to avoid attention, its members have been active in different areas across Afghanistan. They would run underground schools for girls and women where they would use their burqa as a way to hide their books, and disseminate copies of Woman’s Message, secretly aiming to raise awareness among women of their rights and change their minds.
As an unregistered organization carrying out political work and home-schooling, if authorities found about its existence and illicit activity they could react punitively with any member caught up.
Since the assassination of its founder, Meena Kamal, the feminist association has been working more underground as anyone openly identified as member would risk being arrested or even killed. Despite it becoming increasingly dangerous to organize, the movement continues to stand.
“This is the time our women need us the most in Afghanistan,” Salma said. “We have to continue to be the voice of the voiceless who are here.”
Women’s Rights at What Cost?
Afghan women saw improvement in their lives over the past 20 years in terms of access to education, healthcare and employment, as well as economic, social and political empowerment. But the gap between urban centers and rural areas never really narrowed. In rural areas, where it is estimated 76 percent of Afghanistan’s women reside, women still rely on men in their families for permission to attend school and work. Girls are typically allowed to have primary or secondary education, then their families proceed with arranged marriages. In 2020, as little as 29.8 percent of women could read and write.
An Afghan family in a village near Chagcharan Ghor province in 2007 / credit: Vida Urbonaite, Lithuania
“Progress was slower in rural areas,” Rasoully remarked. “We worked hard in advocating to convince parents that their girls could safely go to school in a very culturally appropriate environment that they were comfortable with.”
She called for greater efforts to address the urban-rural divide, noting the international community made the mistake of taking an inequitable approach to offering educational opportunities to Afghan girls, as it directed its programs at young women in cities.
In her view, the insecurity brought on by the war into rural communities was a major impediment that kept girls out of school and prevented women from working.
Many villages experienced for years the devastation of heavy fighting between the Taliban, foreign militaries, government forces and local militias. The loss of husbands, brothers and fathers to the war further compromised women’s ability to go about everyday life.
A woman with her brother are busy drawing water from a river in Afghanistan in 2009 / credit: David Elmore, United States
Salma made clear progress in women’s status in the past two decades has been the result of a “natural process.” During that time, Afghan women acquired basic freedoms that had been withheld from them under the Taliban regime. But the foreign military presence could not be credited for that.
Kolhatkar specified that while the United States had boots on the ground in Afghanistan and it supported women’s rights on paper, the United States allowed the opposite in practice by “working with fundamentalists every step of the way.”
She explicitly said the issue of women’s rights was never a concern for Washington. Rather, it was a pretext to make its long, protracted occupation “palatable.”
“RAWA had been warning the Americans since the early phase of the invasion not to embrace the Taliban, nor the warlords,” Kolhatkar, AWM’s joint director, reminded. “It shouldn’t at all surprise us that the U.S. administration finally left Afghanistan, with misogynist hardliners in charge once again.”
With the Taliban back in control on August 15, a wave of civil resistance mainly was initiated by Afghan women. The protests have built momentum, hitting different parts of the war-ravaged country in the last month.
Further, a new generation has grown up in a country that is connected to the rest of the world through the Internet. That has increased political and social awareness among the general public, especially among young people.
Today, groups of women—small and large—are disobeying Taliban restrictions, protesting in Herat, Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif and other Afghan cities to demand their fundamental rights. They are bravely defying the extremist group, refusing the idea of returning to the grim days that women lived through.
Under the Taliban’s previous rule (1996-2001), the Islamist militants enforced strict rules on women and girls, forcing them to cover their bodies from head to toe, prohibiting them from leaving home without a male family member, and banning them from going to school or work. If they did not abide by the rules, they could face severe punishment, such as imprisonment, torture or execution.
Rasoully expressed concern that the progress made by 35 million Afghans throughout the last two decades, especially young women and girls, may go to waste. She personally mentored girls in medical school, in areas like Kandahar, over the last five years.
“But today, we are being told girls cannot go to school beyond sixth grade,” she said. “This will take us back to the stone ages.”
Maseed, the U.S.-based Afghan activist, insisted today’s Afghan women are better educated and more politically aware than in the 1990s, and will keep pushing for their rights.
“If women go backward, they think it’s better to come out on the streets and be killed than to follow these regressive rules and die inside every day,” the activist affirmed.
Resisting oppression with exceptional resilience—even under the new Taliban rule—they intend to keep up their struggle. They also are appealing to the international community not to grant recognition to the Taliban as a legitimate political actor.
In the past weeks, Afghan associations and supporters in the diaspora have joined Afghan women’s calls to refuse to recognize the Taliban. But they also have criticized the U.S. role in creating a disaster, at both political and humanitarian levels. And it is clear from U.S. machinations that ordinary Afghans will suffer starvation with recent efforts at keeping the Taliban from accessing funds stored in foreign banks.
“Perhaps things were better for many Afghan women under a U.S.-supported government, but it is also the United States’ violent intervention, which has led to the situation in Afghanistan today,” Nida Kirmani, a feminist sociologist and professor at Pakistan’s Lahore University of Management Sciences, wrote in a tweet. “One cannot disconnect the two.”
Using women’s rights again as a means of framing US imperialism. Perhaps things were better for many Afghan women under a US-supported government, but it is also the US’s violent intervention, which has led to the situation in Afghanistan today. One cannot disconnect the two. https://t.co/RYNX9COIvL
Alessandra Bajec is a freelance journalist specializing in West Asia and North Africa. Between 2010 and 2011, she lived in Palestine. She was based in Cairo from 2013 to 2017, and since 2018 has been based in Tunis.
