Table Of ContentPhillip Bonosky
Afghanistan —
Washington’s
S ecret
War
International Publishers, New York
Also by PhiUip Bonosky
Burning Valley (1952)
Brother Bill McKie (1952)
The Magic Fern (1960)
Dragon Pink on Old White (1962)
Beyond the Borders of Myth: from Vilnius to Hanoi (1967)
Two Cultures (1978)
Are Our Moscow Reporters Giving Us the Facts About the USSR (1981)
A Bird in Her Hair (short stories) (1987)
Devils in Amber—The Baltics (1992)
Brother Bill McKie - 2nd Ed. (2000)
© International Publishers, New York, 1985
All rights reserved.
Text printed in the USSR
Covers printed and bound in the USA
© 2nd edition, 2001
Text and cover printed in USA
All rights reserved
For the 1st edition:
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bonosky, Phillip.
Afghanistan, Washington’s Secret War Against
1. Afghanistan—History—Current status,—1979
I. Title. II. Tide.
DS371.2.B66 1984 958M044 84-19139
ISBN0 — 7178 — 0618 — 9
ISBN0 — 7178 — 0617 — 9 (pbk.)
For the 2nd edition:
Bonosky, Phillip.
Afghanistan—Washington’s Secret War
Includes bibliographical references and index
Contents
Preface to 2nd edition ............................................................................................... i
A Word to the Reader................................................................................................. 5
Antique Land............................................................................................................... 6
Looking for a War ...................................................................................................... 11
Furnishing a W ar........................................................................................................ 15
Waiting for Karmal.......................... 20
The Battle for the Mike ............................................................................................. 23
lago to the Revolution ............................................................................................... 30
More on Amin............................................................................................................ 35
What Happened in December.................................................................................... 42
Amin Looks for an Escape........................................................................................ 50
Reasons........................................................................................................................ 59
How to Recognize a Real Revolution...................................................................... 68
Shopping on Chicken Street...................................................................................... 78
Ramadan ...................................................................................................................... 85
Self-Criticism............................................................................................................... 89
Unbinding Minds........................................................................................................ 95
Who Supports the Revolution?................................................................................. 105
Revolutionary Youth Reborn...................................................................................... 112
The End to Factions.................................................................................................... 117
Workers........................................................................................................................ 122
Problems ...................................................................................................................... 127
Trying to Sneak the Sunrise Past the Rooster............................................................134
War by Rumour.............................................................................................................138
Counterattack in February ........................................................................................ 143
Today I Will Tell You a Tale.........................................................................................152
The Strange Case of the Afghan Refugees: Now You See Them,
Now You Don’t ...........................................................................................................156
More Sancho Panza Than Don Quixote .....................................................................166
Kings, Dukes and Low-Down Humbugs.....................................................................171
Uncloaked and Undaggered...................................................................................... 183
Pakistan’s Candle........................................................................................................ 191
Show-Biz Mujahiddin....................................................................................................203
Arms to the Rebels? No, Perhaps, and Then Reagan................................................208
The Saga of the Twig and the Leaf.............................................................................215
Smoking the Gun...........................................................................................................219
Gas!.................................................................................................................................224
Poisoning the U.S.A......................................................................................................229
Is the U.S.S.R. Also Imperialist?..................................................................................233
When Peace Comes ......................................................................................................244
The Prospects of Peace.......................................................................... 253
Afghanistan revisited—1986 .................................................................................... 265
1996 ............................................................................................................................... 276
INDEX.............................................................................................................................279
Preface
Since the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001, much has been said about the des
perate situation of the Afghani people now crushed under the heel of the theocrat
ic, dictatorial Taliban, and about the role of the Northern Alliance and other Taliban
opponents who now figure in Washington’s plans for the region.
There has been talk, most of it distorted, about the role of the Soviet Union in the
years from 1978 to 1989. There has been talk, most of it understated, about the role
of the U.S. in building up the Mujahadeen forces, including the Taliban. But almost
no one talks about the effort the Afghan people made in the late 1970s and ‘80s to
pull fiee of the legacy of incessantly warring tribes and feudal fiefdoms and start
to build a modem democratic state. Or about the Soviet Union’s role long before
1978.
Some background helps shed light on the current crisis. Afghanistan was a
geopolitical prize for 19th century empire builders, contested by both czarist Russia
and the British Empire. It was finally forced by the British into semi-dependency.
When he came to power in 1921, Amanullah Khan—sometimes referred to as
“Afghanistan’s Kemal Ataturk”—sought to reassert his country’s sovereignty and
move it toward the modem world. As part of this effort, he approached the new rev
olutionary government in Moscow, which responded by recognizing Afghanistan’s
independence, and concluding the first Afghan-Soviet friendship treaty.
From 1921 until 1929—when reactionary elements, aided by the British, forced
Amanullah to abdicate—the Soviet union helped launch the beginnings of eco
nomic infrastructure projects such as power plants, water resources, transport and
communications. Thousands of Afghani students attended Soviet technical schools
and universities. After Amanullah’s forced departure, the projects languished, but
the relationship between the Soviet and Afghan people would later re-emerge.
In the 1960s, a resurgence of joint Afghan-Soviet projects included the Kabul
Polytechnic Institute—the country’s prime educational resource for engineers,
geologists and other specialists.
Nor was Afghanistan immune from the political and social ferment that charac
terized the developing world in the last century. From the 1920s on, many pro
gressive currents of struggle took note of the experiences of the USSR, where a
new, more equitable society was emerging on die lands of the former Russian
empire. Afghanistan was no exception. By the mid ‘60s, national democratic revo
lutionary currents had coalesced to form the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
In 1973, local bourgeois forces, aided by some PDP elements, overthrew the 40-
year reign of Mohammad Zahir Shah—the man who now, at age 86, is being pro
moted by U.S. right-wing Republicans as the personage around which Afghanis
can unite.
When the PDP assumed power in 1978, they started to work for a more equitable
distribution of economic and social resources. Among their goals were the contin
uing emancipation of women and girls from the age-old tribal bondage (a process
begun under Zahir Shah), equal rights for minority nationalities, including the
country’s most oppressed group, the Hazara, and increasing access for ordinary
people to education, medical care, decent housing and sanitation. During two vis
its in 1980-81,1 saw the beginnings of progress: women working together in hand
icraft co-ops, where for the first time they could be paid decently for their work and
control the money they earned. Adults, both women and men, learning to read.
Women working as professionals and holding leading government positions,
including Minister of Education. Poor working families able to afford a doctor, and
to send their children—girls and boys—to school. The cancellation of peasant debt
and the start of land reform. Fledgling peasant cooperatives. Price controls and
price reductions on some key foods. Aid to nomads interested in a settled life. I also
saw the bitter results of Mujahadeen attacks by the same groups that now make up
the “Northern Alliance”—in those years aimed especially at schools and teachers
in rural areas.
The post-1978 developments also included Soviet aid to economic and social
projects on a much larger scale, with a new Afghan-Soviet Friendship Treaty and a
variety of new projects, including infrastructure, resource prospecting and mining,
health services, education and agricultural demonstration projects. After December
1978 that role also came to include the limited presence of Soviet troops, at the
request of a PDP government increasingly beset by the displaced feudal and tribal
warlords who were aided and oiganized by the U.S. and Pakistan.
The rest, as they say, is history. But it is significant that after Soviet troops were
withdrawn in 1989, the PDP government continued to function, though increasing
ly beleaguered, for nearly three more years.
Somewhere, beneath the ruins of today’s tom and bloodied Afghanistan, are the
seeds that remain even in the direst times within the hearts of people who know
there is a better future for humanity. In a world struggling for economic and social
justice—not revenge—those seeds will sprout again.
The publication of this updated edition of Phillip Bonosky s book is much need
ed now. It is a serious, valuable study of Afghanistan’s history as well as a well-
documented, persuasive exposure of the role of the CIA and the Pentagon serving
the aims of U.S. imperialism.
Marilyn Bechtel*
* Marilyn Bechtel is a writer on international issues for the People’s Weekly World and for
mer editor of New World Review
Afghanistan — Washington’s Seaiet War
NOTE:
The dates cited for news stories are taken, up to mid-1981,
from the International Herald-Tribune, which is jointly owned by
the New York Times and the Washington Post, but is published in
Paris. It is the only daily newspaper available to English-speaking
Europeans and to Americans living abroad, including those corre
spondents stationed in Moscow.
Because of time differences and editorial reasons, the date
lines in some news stories in the IHT differ by a day or two from
the date of publication in the NYT or the WP. There is a wider gap
in dates for feature stories and editorial comment. Thus the dates
cited, unless otherwise noted, are the IHT dates.
A Word to the Reader
1985
Although this is a book about Afghanistan, it is inevitably as much a book
about Soviet-American relations. There is no question for our times that
looms larger than that and all other questions ultimately defer to it.
In taking up the question of Afghanistan, I have chosen to deal with a
problem that, from the official American point of view, seems to be an open*
and-shut case. Whatever other issues divide Americans, most seem agreed—
or at least the media seems to agree for them—that there is no difference of
opinion there. And yet, as an eyewitness to those events, a close observer of
what took place in Afghanistan before and after December, 1979, I saw an
entirely different Afghanistan than the one most Americans believe they saw»
And there is the crux of the matter.
What precisely is involved here? How can perceptions of the same phe
nomena vary so widely? As William Blake had noted in his day:
Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou read’st black where I read white.
Does an objective reality reign over conflicting forces anyhow? And is it
possible to find what it is, even in the middle of the storm as the winds howl
and the heavens rage?. On what rock can you stand that does not itself
shake?
In this book I have attempted to seek that reality that survives the storm,
to find that rock on which to stand, not away from the storm, but inside the
storm itself: there only to rest on judgment.
ANTIQUE LAND
They are the nameless poor who have been marching
Out of the dark, to that exact moment when history
Crosses the tracks of our time.
Thomas McGrath, Nocturne Militaire
There are several hundred secret passageways (one account puts it)
through the mountain range dividing (with the help of the Durand Line)
but not separating Afghanistan from Pakistan. Every Fall, through these an
cient passageways, which curl upon each other like veins in an old cheese,
tens of thousands of nomads, mainly Pushtun, but including Baluchi, follow
the ghosts of their ancestors to the grazing grounds of what is known to us
as Pakistan, and the following Spring, back to what is known to us as
Afghanistan.
But if you were to ask them who they are—Afghans or Pakistanis—they
•would look blankly at you, shaking their heads, for to them, whose allegiance
today, as it had been for centuries, is to a tribal leader, neither Afghanistan
nor Pakistan is a clear reality. They have no state. They recognize no Dur
and Line. Their “state” is where the grass grows green.
So it was when Marco Polo found them over 700 years ago: “The moun
tains afford pasture for an innumerable quantity of sheep, which ramble
about in flocks...” So it still was to Karl Marx in 1857 who said that
Afghanistan was a mere poetical term for various tribes and states...
Pushing their herds before them—sheep, horses, camels, cattle—they go
from pasture to pasture, and on their way they are waylaid by history, which
comes to them as a violent and alien intrusion. Out of those mysterious spaces
beyond the mountains, strange monsters periodically leap at them: an
Alexander of Greece, who admired their horses; a Tamerlane, a Genghis
Khan from far-off Mongolia—tormented them for a time and then were
gone. They resumed, then, their timeless caravanserai during which infants
of every variety were dropped from humans, sheep and camels without stop
ping the motion of their lives. All they knew of history was that it came to
them as an interruption in this back-and-forth shuttling between green and
green.
In the 19th century other historic monsters from British India leaped out
on them—this time their names were Lord Palmerston, Disraeli, Winston
Churchill, Lord Curzon, Sir Mortimer Durand; and after these had been
shaken off again they went their way, anxious to get out of the mountains
and to pasture before the first snows fell.
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