Workers World, Vol. 22, No. 1
January 2 – The dispatch of Soviet military forces to Afghanistan could not have been viewed by the Soviet government as a desirable or even predictable development. It arose as a result of the virtual disintegration of the forces under the control of the [Hafizullah] Amin government.
The resulting intervention by the Soviet Union can be justified only on the basis of the grim alternative which would fall on the beleaguered people of Afghanistan should the counter-revolutionary forces be permitted to triumph. Given the historic dimensions of such a defeat for the 1978 revolution, only a truly catastrophic development could follow the victory of the rebellious counter-revolutionary forces.
It certainly would have posed a formidable new defense problem for the Soviet Union. A new counter-revolutionary government erected on the ruins of the revolutionary forces could only have become a minion of U.S. imperialism. And given also a possible sudden turn to the far right in the course of the Iranian revolution, the defense problem of the Soviet Union would have been doubly compounded. It would mean that its southern flank would be totally in hostile hands allied with imperialism and under its direction.
These, then, are the true alternatives posed by the regressive developments in Afghanistan.
It should be borne in mind that while so many countries on the face of the globe were influenced by the liberating effects of the Great October Socialist Revolution, few were so little moved by it as was Afghanistan, notwithstanding that it is on the very border of the Soviet Union.
Hundreds and hundreds of years of feudal incrustation left Afghanistan as though ossified, as though immune to the vast social transformations and political developments which the bulk of humanity has experienced in the 20th century. Social reforms which would be regarded by 19th century Western standards as mild and superficial have encountered the most rabid opposition from the feudal ruling class of Afghanistan. And often these paltry reforms, such as those affecting the power of the clergy and the status of women introduced by King Amanullah in the 1920s, were later annulled.
The constitutional monarchy which was introduced in 1964 by King Mohammed Zaher Shah was of such a cosmetic character that it scarcely could be regarded as anything but window dressing. Notwithstanding the constitutional provisions for an independent judiciary, elections, etc., most of these were only of a permissive character requiring the approval of the king to actually become effective.
It should not be wondered at that in July of 1973, almost a decade after the effective inauguration of the constitutional monarchy, General Daoud overthrew the Zahir Shah monarchy and at last the country seemed to be on the verge of experiencing a vigorous political life. For centuries there had been to active political life for the country as a whole, let alone for the oppressed masses.
As has happened many times in history, it often takes a natural catastrophe such as famine and drought to accelerate the political and social deterioration of the old regime. And thus it was with the Mohammed Zahir Shah dynasty, whose overthrow was considerably aided by the severe effects of the famine and drought of 1971-72.
Political changes on the top do not, however, in and of themselves suffice where acute social and class problems are knocking at the door for solution. The Daoud regime did little to in any way materially affect the course of social and political development in the country. It was merely a continuation of the harsh and brutal dynastic regime of the Zahir Shah, with new political administrators but with the old problems of famine, illiteracy, and disease rampant throughout the country.
A measure of what the oppression of feudal exploitation can mean in the 20th century is vividly demonstrated by one or two vital statistics concerning Afghanistan. Out of a total population of 20 million, there were only 400 or 500 doctors in the mid-1970s, and most of these doctors resided in the Kabul area. The infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world, and the per capita income one of the lowest – less than $100 a year. At a time of great steps in communications and transportation, this vast country, said to be the size of Texas, has not a single railroad to date. Transportation is still by camels and pack horses, and fortunate are those who can say they own one or the other.
The soil out of which the mass of the peasants must earn their livelihood is only one-fifth under cultivation, and the methods are the same used by the peasants a thousand years earlier. Even Kabul, which looks modern on the outside, has only one university and there are none in the rese of the country.
The prerequisite for a revolutionary overturn and a cleansing of the feudal stalagmites and stalactites of Afghanistan society has long matured, if one views the situation strictly from the point of view of the objective factors of historical development. The subjective factor, however, the stirring of the masses and awakening to political life, the development of political parties, factions, and groupings, has lagged inordinately far behind the overriding objective factors.
One merely has to consider this fact: it was not until the middle sixties that a communist party of Afghanistan was finally founded – a half a century after the October Revolution and after more than 13 countries had experienced a victorious overthrow of the imperialist yoke and established some form of socialist state.
This illustrates not that there is something peculiarly tardy in the development of the workers, students, peasants, and intellectuals of Afghanistan; it merely brings into bold relief the heavy weight of feudal, ruling class ideology reinforced by a new comprador bourgeois and landlord exploitation. The legacy of the past has weighed inordinately in the scale of Afghan history, and explains in part the weakness of the revolutionary movement in the beleaguered country.
It is therefore not extraordinary in such situations for revolutionary developments to first take place in the superstructure, for the revolutionary struggles to begin at the top rather than in a classical, spontaneous revolutionary intervention by the masses.
The April 1978 revolution must be evaluated in the light of the initially limited support it around in the masses, particularly in the countryside, and in light of the fact that it came as a military overthrow of the previous regime.
The imperialist bourgeoisie was quick to characterize the 1978 revolution as a mere coup d’état. In doing so, they attempted to convey the impression that the masses were excluded from the political struggle. This is a falsehood. The masses were not excluded, rather they were encouraged and exhorted. But the support was nowhere on the scale, for instance, of the Cuban revolution.
When the masses are truly awakened and solidly behind the new government which has liberated them, as was the case in Cuba, imperialist infiltration and attacks such as the Bay of Pigs invasion end in a fiasco and disaster for U.S. imperialism. Unfortunately, the situation in Afghanistan as yet is of an altogether different character.
The Taraki regime did not abolish or change the judicial, military, or police roles of these arms of the state. The reforms they commenced were of a moderate character so far as political changes go. But the land reform, if it had been carried out fully, was of a deep-going character.
None of this could be ascertained with any degree of real accuracy at the time. Suffice it to say that the Taraki regime immediately evoked the morbid hatred of the possessing class and that imperialist subversion directed at the nationalities proved to be surprisingly effective.
It would be wholly erroneous and a disservice to the cause of the revolutionary struggle in Afghanistan to say what might have been done or should have been done by the Taraki government, given the limited support of the masses and the fact that imperialist subversion found fertile soil. It is clear now that the government was faced with the usual predicament in such a situation.
On the one hand, it was necessary to strike back forcefully at the counter-revolutionary elements and rally the masses. The development of such revolutionary institutions as a workers’ and peasants’ militia which would give reign to the creative initiative of the masses seems not to have been proposed; if it was, there is no way of knowing. Nor was there any other conspicuous revolutionary innovation such as would rally the peasants.
It is also possible that the Taraki regime did not adequately respond to the crying needs of equality for all the nationalities – the Baluchis, the Tadjiks, etc. It is noteworthy that the new head of the party and government, Babrak Karmal, made a point of making a special appeal in his first talk to the various nationalities in the country.
The issue facing the Taraki government was whether to broaden the coalition government by including more moderate, that is, left of center bourgeois elements in the government and whether and to what degree to move in suppressing the growing counter-revolutionary insurgency. It is clear now that the division in the government resulted in a virtual coup against Taraki by the Amin forces. The constant hints in the imperialist press that Taraki was indecisive and weak seemed to emanate from the Amin grouping.
The subsequent behavior of Amin’s grouping seems to confirm that he was for a more resolute and forceful policy in destroying the counter-revolutionary forces. The question remained as to whether, in the pursuit of his objective, Amin followed a wise and correct policy of suppressing the counter-revolution while at the same time broadening the base of the revolution by drawing in all progressive elements opposed to the old regime and who shared a general anti-imperialist and truly democratic approach to solving domestic problems.
Force is the midwife to every revolution, Marx taught. But the arbitrary use of terror and violence in and of itself can neither promote the revolutionary cause of the workers and peasants nor break the back of the counter-revolution. An exact appraisal of the relationship of forces, the needs of the masses, the stage of their development, and the general mood of the population as a whole are of supreme importance, among many other factors. Mere destruction, or administrative attempts to do away with the enemies of the revolution by force and violence are not in and of themselves truly revolutionary measures.
A revolution is a festival of the masses. The masses have to be won. It is on them that we have to bank first and foremost.
It is probably an over-simplification to compare Amin to Pol Pot. The latter considers himself a theoretician with a novel method of reconstructing Cambodian society. The ideas in and of themselves were not at all reactionary. The question was whether they were applicable to Cambodian society as it existed immediately after the overthrow of U.S. imperialism.
In an attempt to put the Cambodian masses into his ideological straitjacket, the Pol Pot regime in reality destroyed the revolutionary fabric of the new society. Pol Pot found himself in a blind alley as a result of his penchant for social experimentation, which had no trace of the rich experience of either the Russian, Chinese, or Vietnamese revolutions. Aside from all other factors, his hostility to the Vietnamese Revolution was in some ways predestined on the basis of his spurious social experimentation.
Amin was by no means intent on any experimentation of a sociological character, nor is there any evidence that he was pursuing a particular theoretical world outlook which he sought to impose on Afghanistan. On the contrary, his brief stay at the helm of power seems to have been solely motivated by the belief that forceful measures directed at the counter-revolution as well as against his more cautious political opponents in the Party were the answer to the problems of the revolution. In contrast to Pol Pot, Amin seems to have been a pragmatist.
There are, of course, probably a multitude of issues which divided the Amin grouping from the Karmal group, which clearly stands for the formation of a broad coalition, the rallying of the masses, and the attempt to politically neutralize and possibly co-opt elements of the counter-revolutionary insurgence. Whether this policy will succeed remains to be seen. We can only hope that it will.
Clearly, the revolutionary forces have been on the defensive and stood in imminent peril of being overwhelmed. The dispatch of Soviet military forces could not have been a desirable objective for the Karmal government, either. It was clearly a case of necessity being the mother of invention.
If the new Karmal government can stabilize the situation with the help of the Soviet military forces, if it can break the back of the counter-revolutionary forces aided by U.S. imperialism as well as by China and Pakistan, it will have significantly turned the situation around. As we have seen in Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Cuba, Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia, imperialism does not give up. Nor has it ever given up on the insane idea of vanquishing the USSR itself.
A long struggle lies ahead in Afghanistan. It should not preclude, however, given Soviet help and understanding and support by the world movement, that the Karmal government will soon be able to take the high road of economic reconstruction and being the historic task of truly transforming Afghanistan into a progressive, socialist country.
Last updated: 11 May 2026