Afghanistan and the War on Drugs
The now nearly two decade war in Afghanistan has produced nothing but more misery, statelessness, poverty and deprivation for the people of Afghanistan. Under the guise of “fighting terrorism” the United States has sent thousands of troops to occupy the country indefinitely. Just this year Trump pledged to send 5,000 or more troops to Afghanistan and this is after he dropped the “Mother of All Bombs” on the country destroying old CIA-Al-Qaeda built tunnels.
The anti-war movement here needs to look to the question of Afghanistan and reflect on our connection to it in order to clarify and accelerate our anti-imperialist movement. Afghanistan is the result of the old Cold War struggle between the big superpowers of the world. Afghanistan once had a progressive and secular government in the 1970’s through the 80’s but it was overthrown by U.S. imperialism working in collaboration with the far right wing theocratic fundamentalist Mujhadeen. The U.S. claimed it was “fighting communism” but in reality they were supporting those who would become Al-Qaeda and in fact helped a great deal to build their infrastructure.
After the Soviet Union fell, we saw U.S. imperialism go on a rampage throughout the entire Middle East. It tried to re-colonize all that it could now that the global anchor for the anti-colonialist movement, the Soviet Union, had collapsed. Now in 2017, after being in Afghanistan for more than 15 years, what can we say the U.S. is doing but colonialism? It has made Afghanistan more dependent in every sense of the word, politically, economically, and socially. Like China during its Opium Wars with the British, the rise in the drug trade and drug trafficking is a direct outcome of colonial occupation. The mass pumping of drugs into impoverished communities serves the political purpose of pacifying and killing the people slowly. This is colonialism on autopilot.
At home, the “War on Drugs” has created a similar response. The “War on Drugs” was a war that incarcerated over one million African Americans in a few decades. While in prison, many are forced to labor for free and in Massachusetts at MCI-Norfolk the water they are being forced to drink, bathe, and use is black and brown. It is toxic and is killing them slowly while they labor for the racist imperialist state claiming to be a “bastion of democracy and freedom.” Freedom for who? To do what? To enslave and rob and colonize? From Afghanistan to right here in New Hampshire we must call out the .01% who benefit from our pain and struggle and facilitate it by controlling government.
The War on Drugs led to the hyper militarization of Black and Brown communities while the industrial working class jobs left because of the capital flight caused by so-called “globalization.” The capitalist class in the U.S. decided that it would be more beneficial for them and their shareholders to move jobs and production to low wage countries where they can colonize or neo-colonize their nation and keep themselves afloat. This is all while we drown in our pain and struggle every day. From the bottle, to addiction, to joblessness, homelessness, struggling with medical bills and more the working class and oppressed people are suffering while this small minority of people are thriving off our work. When I say our I mean all the people from New Hampshire to Afghanistan to Korea. We all have more in common with one another as working people than we do with “our own” ruling class. The spirit of solidarity must run through our anti-war movement today. It must become a working class internationalist movement that stands up to war and its cause in monopoly capitalism stemming from the West.
Drug production has skyrocketed in Afghanistan, 93 % of the world’s heroin comes from the nation. From 2000 to 2015 overdose deaths linked to opioid derived narcotics have quadrupled according to the Center for Disease Control. The majority of the world’s heroin usage comes from Afghanistan, but with such destruction and political and economic chaos one has to wonder how this poor landlocked nation is able to supply the global heroin markets including the underground ones particularly in the United States.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s Afghanistan Opium Survey, 2016 saw a 43% increase in opium production over 2015. In the period from 1994 to 2001, the average annual land area used for opium cultivation was 60,625 hectares. This number has skyrocketed since the US-led NATO invasion with an average of 150,122 hectares used for production between 2002 and 2016.
The continuation of the domestic drug war and the war on terror are two daggers in the heart of the working class of this country and Afghanistan. The overproduction of opioids finds a market here in the U.S. as the working class becomes more and more depressed and oppressed by the continuation of neoliberal austerity and militarization of the police. In Afghanistan the Taliban is stronger than ever and the drug trade is a scourge to the population de-politicizing them and pacifying them. However, amidst all of this terrible trauma and carnage wrought by U.S. imperialism in conjunction with reactionary fuedalist theocrats in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East, the question of self-determination and social revolution loom.
Afghanistan was not always such a vassal state. After being ruled by a monarchy from the 1929 to 1973 in 1978 there was a revolutionary coup led by a Communist Party, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. In 1978 the socialist government announced a democratic reform program that included land reform, growth in public services, price controls, separation of church and state, full equality for women, legalization of trade unions and a sweeping literacy campaign. The new government cancelled the enormous debts of peasants and started training teachers and building school and hospitals all over the country. Women could no longer be sold into marriage or executed for so-called “infidelities.” Literacy campaigns were undertaken in the many different languages of the country. Despite violent resistance from rich landowners, 200,000 peasants in a country of 20 million received land from the socialist government. From 1978 to 1981, public school enrollment went from 5,000 to 600,000. Nineteen thousand teachers were trained. Immediately, the United States launched a counter-revolutionary offensive that lasted 14 year and became the largest CIA operation in history, costing an estimated $6 billion.
Despite the fact that Afghanistan had absolutely nothing to do with the infamous September 11th terrorist attacks in the U.S. the nation was still targeted for invasion by the U.S. imperialists. This just goes to show that the U.S. has absolutely no regard for life, the rule of law, or even their own constitution. The invasion has created the conditions for Afghanistan to become the world’s top opium poppy producer. Despite the billions of dollars the U.S. has pumped into the country post-9/11 ($25 billion to rebuild the economy and $8.5 billion to rid it of narcotics). But no amount of money can solve this problem. What is needed is to remove the imperialist occupiers and allow for Afghanistan to become a free, independent, and self-determining republic of the workers and peasants.
For the U.S. peace, anti-war, and anti-imperialist movement this means that we must increase our agitation and broaden our analysis to encompass the connection between the war on drugs, the war on terror, and the intersection of the military-industrial complex playing buffer for the rampaging neo-liberalism destroying our lives. The billions being used for war, genocide, death and destruction could be reparations to those affected by the war on drugs and the war on terror. We cannot imagine a society based on social justice that is still an empire and warring with the people of the world. We emphatically reject the government’s crocodile tears about the current opioid epidemic. The imperialists must get out of Afghanistan and put that wealth under the control and at the service of the working people of the U.S. and the oppressed in Afghanistan. The chemical warfare of drugs and opioids must come to an end through a mass people’s movement centering self-determination and anti-imperialism. The A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition of which the PSL is a leading member of is a part of the People’s Congress of Resistance which seeks to unite as many progressive and grassroots resistance fighters to racism, sexism, and class oppression to build a united front against imperialism and for fundamental social and political transformation.
U.S. troops out of Afghanistan!
Reparations for the people of Afghanistan!
End the war on drugs and the war on terror!
Reparations for the victims of the war on drugs and terror!
