Are the US rulers of Afghanistan adopting the Soviet agenda of the 80's?

[papau]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1083888,00.html

Red Kabul revisited

Are the US rulers of Afghanistan at last adopting the agenda of their Soviet predecessors?

Jonathan Steele
Thursday November 13, 2003
The Guardian

Two years after Kabul was freed from the Taliban there's a sense of deja vu about Afghanistan. The striking comparison is not primarily with Iraq, although reminders of the trouble the Americans are having in Mesopotamia pop up constantly. Indeed, in some ways things are worse. Fighting is on a heavier scale, with US helicopters and aircraft conducting almost daily raids on Taliban groups. Swathes of the south have become no-go areas for UN aid workers and NGOs. More than 350 people have been killed by Taliban attackers or US air raids since August, a death toll greater than in Iraq.

No, Kabul today bears a strong resemblance to the Kabul of 1981. This time the men setting the model are American rather than Russian, but the project for secular modernisation which Washington has embarked on is eerily reminiscent of what the Soviet Union tried to do. Schools, hospitals, electrification, rights for women, an expansion of education - it's the same mix as the Russians were encouraging. Moscow's aid came within the framework of a one-party state and national control of fledgling industry as opposed to today's liberal democracy and an open door for private investors; but for most Afghans, then as now, the ideological trappings matter less than the practical results and the amount of money put to work. In 1981, Kabul's two campuses thronged with women students, as well as men. Most went around without even a headscarf. Hundreds went off to Soviet universities to study engineering, agronomy and medicine. The banqueting hall of the Kabul hotel pulsated most nights to the excitement of wedding parties. The markets thrived. Caravans of painted lorries rolled up from Pakistan, bringing Japanese TV sets, video recorders, cameras and music centres. The Russians did nothing to stop this vibrant private enterprise.

Of course, Kabul was an invaded city, but most residents did not seem worried. Baghdad-style bomb attacks on Soviet troops were rare and the mujahedin who fought the Russians in the countryside never approached the capital. Unlike the Americans in Iraq, the Russians had enough intelligence from locals to forestall sabotage attempts.<snip>


Secondly, Kabul was not Grozny. The Russians captured it without a fight, and most Kabulis supported their agenda. This was not a war of Russia v Afghanistan, but a civil war in which the Russians supported secular, urban Afghans against Islamic traditionalists and their Arab and western backers.... Washington wanted revenge for defeat in Vietnam, and George Bush senior was not ready to accept a communist role in government, however much educated Afghans preferred that to victory for the fundamentalists. <snip>

I don't expect western leaders will revise their ideological image of Afghan history or accept that arming the mujahedin was a blunder. I just hope they will nurture secular democracy this time by fighting, rather than supporting, the fundamentalists and by helping Afghans to rebuild their shattered state. Let the development money keep on flowing in. Governments will call it aid. I prefer to see it as reparations.
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