Civil War in Afghanistan Will Threaten Afghanistan, China and Pakistan

Now that my Toward Freedom guest editorship has come to an end, I am reflecting back on the stories we ran for the past 6+ months and the writers who wrote them.

The scenes coming out of Modi’s India and its pandemic nightmare have been particularly horrific, causing me to inquire about the health of Toward Freedom contributor Sanket Jain. Sanket is a freelance journalist based in western India. TF ran two of his stories in December and February about how India’s poorest citizens were barely coping with Covid. He emailed me back: “Fortunately, I am safe. For the past few weeks, I have been on the field documenting the disaster that’s unfolding in remote villages of India. Last week, I was shooting photos at the crematorium to see how many people have died of COVID because the Government is hiding official numbers. It’s a nightmare to see a human disaster unfolding at such a massive scale. From lack of oxygen, improper vaccination policy, COVID patients facing ostracism in the village, to frontline healthcare workers facing verbal abuse and even physical assault, India is witnessing a humanitarian crisis. I hope we come out of this disaster soon.”

Stay safe, Sanket, and keep sending us your stories.

Another writer who moved me deeply is Charles Wachira. His recent story on what’s happening in Uganda opened my eyes to what’s happening throughout much of Africa; the maintenance of dictatorial rule [e.g through the (truly) rigged election of President Yoweri Museveni in Uganda] to ensure “stability” for resource extraction by foreign corporations. With remarkable patience in responding to my queries, Charles produced evidence that the Great Game for Oil is now on steroids in East Africa (much of which lies opposite the Red Sea – and Saudi Arabia.)

Fascinatingly, a similar situation is playing out in West Africa, as explained by Eric Agnero in his story on how President Alassane Ouattara was able to extend his unconstitutional rule over Cote d’Ivoire, aided and abetted by France and the United States.

I admit: I came into this job with a geopolitical perspective, one which is followed by most world powers as they survey entire regions for riches. I discovered it during decades of researching my new book on endless wars. You’ll find a geopolitical analysis reflected in my article on Afghanistan: If you want to understand the many wars that have swept through the Middle East, Central Asia, and now Africa, you need only to follow the pipelines and the oil schemes taking place right now. All this, despite promises by Big Oil to invest in alternative energy to slow down climate change.

 

Trend Lines in the TF Stories

Looking back, it was a privilege to be able to choose stories that reflected extraordinary, indeed history-making events between October 2020 and early May. Below, I will highlight some of those stories, as certain trends begin to emerge. Call them patterns of history. Ten years from now, you may want to look back on them as if they were diary entries of an unforgettable period in your life, featuring Covid 19, Trump’s defeat, the January 6 assault on the capitol; the re-invigoration of the Black Lives Matter movement after the death of George Floyd; the rise of the right wing in the United States based on claims of voter fraud, the similar tactics used by Trump’s fascist allies abroad. Democracy v Racist Authoritarianism is one overriding theme. Look for others:

In October 2020, Toward Freedom ran stories on two historic elections. Olivia Arigho-Stiles’s article on the elections in Bolivia, which returned the MAS party to power, gave us some hope that massive turnouts could turn the table on authoritarian regimes. Meanwhile, in the leadup to the November elections in the United States, Harvey Wasserman and Greg Palast sounded warnings that voter fraud mechanisms were in place in Florida and Wisconsin. Who could have guessed that Secretary of State Raffensperger (or, as Palast calls him, Raffens-purger) would later emerge as a hero for upholding the integrity of Georgia’s vote for Biden, when in 2020 he was responsible for purging 198,000 names from the voter roles!

The big news in November 2020, was the defeat of Donald Trump thanks to the commitment of black and brown voters, who ensured “the largest turnout ever by U.S. voters in a presidential election.” We were so hopeful, I wrote back then. noting that Trump’s “multiple lawsuits claiming ‘voter fraud’ have been rejected so far by U.S. courts for lack of evidence.” As It turned out, Trump continued to use voter fraud to enrage his base…even against fellow Republicans. The fight against a fascist movement in America is far from over.

We also witnessed through the reporting of Serbian journalist Nicolas Micovec some tense super-power standoffs. In Belarus, a proxy battle by “the Western-backed Belarusian opposition” failed to topple President Alexander Lukashenko, who is still firmly supported by Russia.” In Nagorno-Karabakh, more deadly proxy battles were raging between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces, where “the conflict is being carefully watched for two reasons: 1) its potential to spread beyond its borders, and 2) an underlying energy war between Russia, the US, and the European Union.”

In December 2020, we began to take stock of what the world would soon face with the new Biden administration. Climate change was high on the agenda, especially since the Trump administration in November officially withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement. Rashika Pardikar, an Indian journalist, wrote of the “responsibility to both undo the damage done by the Trump administration and do more to address climate vulnerability concerns, especially in the developing world.’ Especially, she notes, because “the US is responsible for 25% of global emissions.” And what could provide better evidence of the dangers of climate change than two horrific Category 4 hurricanes which slammed into Nicaragua and Honduras in November, two weeks apart? Toward Freedom contacted Dan Higgins of the Burlington-Puerto Cabezas Sister City program. His and others’ reporting helped raise aid for the people of Puerto Cabezas, where roughly 2,000 homes were destroyed, and another 9,000 properties were damaged. The article turned into a good opportunity for Higgins to reflect on the history of “Port,” whose “peoples, languages, culture and history [on the Atlantic Coast} are very different from the Spanish-speaking side of Nicaragua.” He writes that the issue of autonomy “continues to be a flash point in Nicaraguan politics, with differing interpretations of what autonomy means.”

Elections in Venezuela, another hot point in international affairs (due in large part to the Trump administration’s economic sanctions to bring about regime change), came into focus as CodePink sent reporter Teri Mattison to observe the country’s December 6 legislative elections. “The sanctions imposed on Venezuela are a form of economic warfare… meant to create hardship and unrest,” Teri reported. (The elections resulted in a victory for President Nicolas Maduro and his allies. The opposition, which boycotted the elections, claimed “election fraud!” Thanks to reporting from Peter Lacowski, “Cries of election fraud by Donald Trump and his followers are familiar to Venezuelans; their right-wing opposition has been doing the same thing for years.”

In January 2021, we focused on Trump’s lies about a “stolen election,” which triggered the right wing assault on the Capitol on January 6, causing TF to immediately probe for details. Jonathan Ben Menachem provided some shocking details in “Cops at the Capitol,” which revealed, “at least 26 sworn members of U.S. law enforcement agencies from at least 11 states have been identified by law enforcement agencies and local reporting as attendees of the Jan. 6 rally.” Alexander Hinton, in his evaluation of the raid, warned us –correctly as it turned out – not to underestimate far right extremists in the US.

The other big news of January, of course, was the Inauguration of Joe Biden, and “Why Poet Amanda Gorman Stole the Inaugural Show” with her reading of her newest poem, “The Hill We Climb.” We published her poem in full, noting that Gorman was about halfway through the poem on Jan. 6, when pro-Trump rioters stormed into the halls of Congress, some bearing weapons and Confederate flags. She stayed awake late into the night and finished the poem, adding verses about the apocalyptic scene that unfolded at the Capitol that day.” Her eloquent performance was a source of pride for the Black Lives Matter movement and its supporters.

By February 2021, Toward Freedom reported that Trump’s voter fraud allegations seem to have found a receptive audience with generals in Myanmar. Emily Blumenthal observed “glaring similarities between the attempted coup in the US and the successful coup in Myanmar.” She quotes from the rightwing US group QAnon, which supported the coup: “The Burmese military has arrested the country’s leaders after credible evidence of widespread voter fraud became impossible to ignore…Sounds like the controlled media and Biden admin are scared this might happen here. “ An expert on Myanmar concluded, “Trump has given despots across the world fresh rhetorical ammunition to justify their authoritarian actions.”

If this weren’t unsettling news in the post-Trump era, our apprehension about Biden’s foreign policy turned to alarm after US forces bombed Syria in February. In their piece, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies remind us that “the airstrikes were supposedly authorized by the 20-year-old, post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), legislation that Rep. Barbara Lee has been trying for years to repeal since it has been misused,  ‘to justify waging war in at least seven different countries, against a continuously expanding list of targetable adversaries.’

In March 2021, Toward Freedom observed the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring with disturbing reportage about the least known revolts in Bahrain. Finian Cunningham reveals that “Western powers played a nefarious role to ensure that the Arab Spring was kneecapped in order to cripple any progressive potential.” In Tunisia, where popular revolts launched the Arab Spring, Alessandra Bajek provides an in-depth report, noting that “Tunisia has failed to make any substantial progress in the daily lives of its citizens as the country’s democratization is not accompanied by a socio-economic transition. Nor should we forget that it was the Obama-Biden administration that oversaw the Arab Spring, as well as the regime change in Libya, which devolved into a disastrous civil (read proxy) war, killing thousands with many more displaced. According to Mathew Cole, Blackwater mercenaries poured into Libya, portraying themselves as “unarmed logistical personnel being sent in to support oil and gas companies.”

In April 2021, Toward Freedom reported on escalated tensions between Israel and Iran, after Israel bombed Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility. Kim Zeter reports, “The sabotage seemed timed to send a message — both to Iran and to the U.S. and Europe. It occurred just days after talks began in Vienna to revive the Obama-instigated 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran to control its uranium enrichment production.” Fortunately, cooler heads once again prevailed, and the negotiations are continuing. There is even talk that Saudi Arabia and Iran have been holding secret talks.

The situation in Yemen, as revealed by William Boardman, is not as rosy as the Biden administration would have us believe. “Biden,” he writes, “promised that the US would be ‘ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen.’ Biden gave no specific details. The six-year bombing continues. The six-year naval blockade of Yemen continues. The humanitarian crisis continues, with the threat of famine looming. In effect, Biden has participated in war crimes since January 20, with no policy in sight to end the killing.” Long-time activist Kathy Kelley, worried that the American people were becoming desensitized to the killings in Yemen, reporting on a hunger strike taking place in Washington, DC. demanding an end to the war in Yemen.

 

Concluding Thoughts: The pandemic brought us many challenges. I, for one, was fortunate to have a job that allowed me to connect with writers from around the world from the safety of my own home.

Now that the pandemic is gradually lifting, I hope to spend more time promoting my book, which suffered greatly from being published during the lockdown. I wish all readers well as they hopefully recalibrate their lives toward a better future. Maybe a new Renaissance will be born out of COVID-19, just as the Renaissance emerged out of Italy’s Black Death in the 15th century. Let history—and science—be our guide, and may today’s movements –for democracy, justice and true equality—be our inspiration!

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.

On February 25, 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced his country of 1.4 billion people had pulled its people out of poverty as it is defined internationally. Since 1981, 853 million Chinese people have lifted themselves out of poverty thanks to large-scale interventions from both the Chinese state and the Communist Party of China (CPC); according to the data of the World Bank, three out of four people worldwide who were lifted out of poverty live in China. “No country has been able to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in such a short time,” Xi said.

When UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited China in September 2019, he gushed over this accomplishment, calling it the “greatest anti-poverty achievement in history.”

“You reduced infant and maternal mortality rates, improved nutrition, reduced stunting and halved the proportion of the population without access to safe drinking water and sanitation,” Guterres said.

In 1949, at the time of the Chinese Revolution, the infant mortality rate in China was 200 per 1,000 live births; this declined to fewer than 50 by 1980. A World Bank study from 1988 noted, “Much of China’s success in improving the health of its people can be attributed to the health policies and the national health service delivery system.”

This is the historical context for Secretary Guterres’ 2019 comment; in other words, the Chinese state institutions—products of the revolution led by the CPC—improved the social conditions of life.

Before the Revolution

In 1949, China was one of the world’s poorest countries. Only 10 countries had a lower per capita GDP than China. Chairman Mao Zedong’s famous words at the inauguration of the People’s Republic of China—“The Chinese people have stood up”—is a reflection of a century of humiliations that produced terrible poverty in the country.

The degree of this national suffering may be seen in the fact that between 1840 and 1949 almost 100 million Chinese people died in wars, which directly resulted from foreign intervention, or were victims of civil wars and famines related to those interventions. China had suffered the longest Second World War, from 1937 to 1945 (with a civil war following that lasted until 1949); the death toll was at least 14 million (as documented by Rana Mitter in his book, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945). From the Opium Wars beginning in 1839 to the Japanese invasion in 1931, China struggled to establish its sovereignty and its future.

It was the terrible burden of this past that brought together a range of radicals to establish the CPC in July 1921 in Shanghai. The small group of 13—including Mao—met in Shanghai’s French Concession and then on a tourist boat on Nanhu Lake after the foreign police came for them on the information of a spy. The principal task of the CPC was to organize and guide the working class. By May Day 1924, 100,000 workers marched in Shanghai, while 200,000 workers marched in Canton. “The time is past when workers are only cannon fodder for the bosses,” the workers wrote in a leaflet. The CPC threw itself into these struggles, growing through setbacks—including the Shanghai Massacre of 1927; leadership by the CPC in the protracted, anti-imperialist war against Japan led it to eventual victory in 1949.

Phases of Socialist Construction

The Chinese Revolution had to confront a broken state, a destroyed economy and a society in deep turmoil. In 1949, China’s people lived three years less than the world average. They were less well-educated and deeply unhealthy. By 1978, they lived five years longer than the world average. Literacy rates had risen, and health care data showed a marked improvement. As China in 1978 was 22 percent of the world’s population, never in human history had such an immense step forward taken place.

From 1978, with the introduction of “reform and opening up,” China achieved the fastest economic growth ever calculated by a major country in recorded history. From 1978 to 2020, China’s annual average GDP growth was 9.2 percent. Since 1978, China’s household consumption has increased by 1,800 percent, twice that of any major country. This means that everyday life has improved markedly in China. China’s literacy rate is now 97.33 percent, up from 95.92 percent in 2010, far above the literacy rate of 20 percent in 1949.

By 2025, China will become a “high-income” economy by World Bank international standards, according to Justin Lin Yifu (a standing committee member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee, and dean and professor at the Institute of New Structural Economics of Peking University). That is, in about 75 years, a single lifetime, China will have gone from almost the world’s poorest country to a high-income economy—with all the enormous improvement in human living standards, life expectancy, education, culture and numerous other dimensions of human welfare this results in.

With a handful of people founding the Chinese Communist Party 100 years ago, the Chinese people gained a leadership body that could deliver them from a struggle that dates back to 1839. Now, the CPC will play a decisive role in determining the fate not only of China but of the world. This historical context is too often lost when Western media and politicians play down China’s socioeconomic victories or imply they came out of nowhere. China’s people have fought for this outcome for centuries.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.

John Ross is a senior fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. His writing on the Chinese and U.S. economies and geopolitics has been published widely online, and he is the author of two books published in China, Don’t Misunderstand China’s Economy and The Great Chess Game. His most recent book is China’s Great Road: Lessons for Marxist Theory and Socialist Practices (1804 Books, 2021). He was previously director of economic policy for the mayor of London.