A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 7: 1968-1976

Since Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, between 500 and 800 people have been killed by Pentagon drone attacks in Pakistan, as a by-product of the U.S. War Machine’s endless military intervention in Afghanistan. Yet much of the history of people in Afghanistan since 1968 may not still be widely-known, even by many readers of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.

In 1968, for example, when student revolts broke out in the United States at Columbia University, in France, in Mexico and in other countries of the world, student revolts also broke out in Afghanistan and “student strikes that began in Kabul spread to provincial centers, where students who had returned to teach and work had become carriers of a new politically radicalized militancy,” according to Afghanistan: A Modern History by Angelo Rasanayagam. The following year, Afghan workers also struck for better pay and better working conditions in the few places in Afghanistan where some factories existed. Between 1965 and 1973, two thousand meetings and demonstrations—mostly led by activists of the secular leftist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan [PDPA] factions/parties—were held in Afghanistan which demanded more democratic reforms and modernization efforts in Afghanistan.

But right-wing Islamic opponents of democratic reforms and modernization efforts in Afghanistan also mobilized between 1965 and 1973 in Afghanistan. In 1971, for example, the University of Kabul “was closed for six months as a result of the bitter confrontation between Islamic and leftist radicals,” according to Afghanistan: A Modern History. The same book also recalled that in the early 1970s in Afghanistan:

“The Islamic backlash also took the form of attacks instigated by the mullahs on women wearing Western dress. They were incensed by the campaigns for female literacy and women’s rights led by the All-Afghanistan’s Women’s Council. According to a senior leader of the Council interviewed by George Arney, the mullahs declared in 1971 that women should stay in the house. Reactionaries sprayed acid on women’s faces when they came out in public without a veil. And when women wore stockings they shot at their legs with guns with silencers…”

By the early 1970s, dozens of Afghan political groups existed on campus at the University of Kabul. In addition, around 2,500 people in Afghanistan were also members of the PDPA faction/party [Khalq] led by Noor Mohammad Taraki and 1,500 to 2,000 Afghans were members of the PDPA faction/party [Parcham] led by Babrak Karmal. The number of people in Afghanistan who were members of the secular Maoist party was also between 1,500 and 2,000 in the early 1970s. But the Islamic party in Afghanistan still only had between 1,500 and 2,000 members. Yet, as James Lucas noted in an article, titled “America’s Nation-Destroying Mission in Afghanistan”, that was posted on March 5, 2010 on the www.antiwar.org site, “according to Roger Morris, National Security Council staff member, the CIA started to offer covert backing to Islamic radicals as early as 1973-1974.”

Nearly all the members of the PDPA faction/parties, the Maoist party and the Islamic party in Afghanistan in the early 1970s, however, were still just members of the educated urban middle-class; and all of these political groups still did not have much of an organizational presence or mass base outside of Kabul, in the rural areas of Afghanistan.

Yet many people in the countryside were suffering from the effects of a drought in Afghanistan between 1964 and 1972, which developed into a famine in 1971 and 1972. One result of this famine in Afghanistan in 1971 and 1972 was that between 50,000 to 500,000 people starved to death because of the famine. And 75 percent of Afghanistan ’s land was still owned by only 3 percent of Afghan’s rural population in 1973.

Backed by Afghan military officers, Mohammad Daoud (the brother-in-law of Afghan King Zahir Shah who had previously been the Afghan monarchical regime’s autocratic prime minister between 1953 and 1963) then seized control of the Afghan government from the Afghan king (who had been sitting on the throne since 1933) in a July 17, 1973 coup—while Zahir Shah was on a holiday in Europe. After his 1973 palace coup abolished the monarchy, Daoud next “set up an authoritarian regime which made the government isolated” and “moved rapidly to undermine all the representative institutions” in Afghanistan “and, in particular, Parliament,” according to Revolution Unending: Afghanistan: 1979 to the Present by Gilles Dorronsoro. The same book also recalled that “to avoid any challenge Daud systematically suppressed the opposition, both legal and illegal” in Afghanistan and “following the coup the former Prime Minister and leader of the social democratic Hezb-I Demokrat-I Mottarki party, Dr. Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal ,who had been in power in 1965-67, was arrested in September 1973 and executed.”

Yet long before the U.S. government began to covertly arm the anti-feminist Mujahideen guerrillas during the Democratic Carter Administration—following the 1978 Afghan Saur (‘April’) Revolution and prior to the December 1979 Soviet government’s military intervention in Afghanistan—even the non-communist, autocratic Daoud monarchical regime and the post-1973 non-communist Daoud authoritarian regime felt that it was in Afghanistan’s national economic interest to align itself with the Soviet Union during the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. As Afghanistan: A Modern History recalled:

“…Economic hardships caused the Afghans to turn to the Soviets for help…A four-year barter agreement was signed in July 1950, with the Soviets providing petroleum products, cement, cotton cloth and other essentials in return for wool, raw cotton and other Afghan products. The Soviets also agreed to the free transit of Afghan exports through their territory, and offered to invest in oil exploration…”

After lending the Afghan government money to construct a grain silo, a flour mill and a bakery in Kabul in 1954, for example, the Soviet government followed-up with loans for constructing an oil pipeline and three oil storage facilities, for road-building equipment, and for an asphalt factory and equipment to pave Kabul’s streets. Nearly $1.3 billion in Soviet economic assistance, mostly in the form of loans, was given to the non-communist Afghan government between 1956 and 1978; and an additional $110 million was received by the Afghan government from other Eastern bloc governments during the same period.

The U.S. government, in contrast, only began to provide some economic assistance to the non-communist, autocratic Afghan monarchical regime in 1956; and, after 1956, also began awarding some Afghan students grants to study at certain U.S. universities. But, according to James Lucas’s recent “ America ’s Nation-Destroying Mission In Afghanistan” article:

“The CIA…recruited Afghan students in the U.S. to act as agents for them when they returned home. During this period at least one president of the Afghanistan Students Association (ASA), Zia H. Noorzay, was working with the CIA in the U.S. and later became president of the Afghanistan state treasury. One of the Afghan students whom Noorzay and the CIA tried in vain to recruit, Abdul Latif Hotaki, declared in 1967 that a good number of the key officials in the Afghanistan government who studied in the U.S. `are either CIA-trained or indoctrinated.’”

Coincidentally, the Afghanistan Student Association [ASA] also apparently received part of its funding from the CIA’s Asia Foundation conduit [on whose board sat then-Columbia University President Grayson Kirk] during the Cold War Era.

In addition, between the mid-1950s and 1978, the Teachers College of Columbia University—under a U.S. Agency for International Development [AID] government contract—was involved in training teachers, developing educational curriculum and producing textbooks for the autocratic Daoud monarchical regime’s Ministry of Education in both Afghanistan, at the Ibn Sinn Teacher Training Institute in Kabul, and at Columbia University Teachers College in New York City.

Military assistance was also given by the Soviet Union to the non-communist, autocratic monarchical Afghan regime during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Between 1956 and 1978, for example, the Afghan government “received the equivalent of $1.24 million in military aid from the USSR , mostly in the form of credits” and “by 1978 some 3,725 Afghan military personnel had been trained in the Soviet Union,” according to Afghanistan: A Modern History.

But after the Shah of Iran’s regime agreed to provide the Afghan government with $2 billion in economic aid in 1975 and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited Kabul, Afghanistan in August 1976, the non-communist, authoritarian Daoud regime apparently began to reverse Afghanistan ’s post-1950 policy of aligning with the Soviet Union.

(end of part 7. To be followed by “A People’s History of Afghanistan—Part 8: 1977-1978")

This article originally appeared in the Austin, Texas-based Rag Blog alternative news blog.

A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 6: 1953-1967

In 2010, hundreds of thousands of Afghans are still displaced from their homes as a result of the U.S.-led or U.S.-supported military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan that have taken place since the Pentagon began its endless war in Afghanistan in October 2001. Yet most graduate students in history at U.S. universities were apparently never even required to take a course in the history of Afghanistan when they were undergraduates.

But in a 1953 palace revolution in Afghanistan, for example, Afghan Prince Mohammad Daoud--a cousin and brother-in-law of King Zahir Shah--became the Afghan monarchical regime’s Prime Minister, with the backing of the Afghan royal family; and Daoud then governed Afghanistan in an autocratic way between 1953 and 1963. As a result, “avowed Marxists like Dr. Mahmodi…spent the entire Daoud decade in jail” and other Afghan leftist dissidents, like Mir Akbar Khyber and Afghan leftist student dissident Babrak Karmal, “were released in 1956 on condition that they did not persist in their political activities,” according to Afghanistan: A Modern History by Angelo Rasanayagam.

But after being released from prison in 1956, serving two years in the Afghan military and then becoming a student again, Babrak Karmal—the politically radicalized son of an Afghan general and provincial governor—began to recruit dissident left-wing Afghan intellectuals and activists to begin meeting in secret “study circles” inside Afghan private homes during the early 1960s. Four secret Afghan study circles of radical left Afghan dissidents were formed, one of which was led by Karmal. Another one of the four secret Afghan study circles during the early 1960s was led by an Afghan writer named Noor Mohammad Taraki, who had become politically radicalized while working in India between 1934 and 1937, when India was still a UK colony.

After Daoud involved the Afghan government in a dispute with Pakistan’s government that provoked a closing of the Afghan-Pakistan border (which led to a decline in Afghan government revenues), Daoud was forced to resign as prime minister on March 9, 1963. A new, more democratic constitution was then drafted and promulgated in 1964 by the Afghan monarchical government.

Meanwhile, in January 1965, 30 members of the four secret study circles of dissident radical left Afghan intellectuals and activists met at Noor Mohammad Taraki’s house to secretly form the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan [PDPA] a/k/a Khalq (“Masses”) and to elect a 7-member Central Committee and four alternate Central Committee members. In 1965 an election was also held in Afghanistan to choose members of a two-house Afghan parliament and Mohammad Yusuf was chosen to succeed Daoud as the new Afghan government’s prime minister.

Running as individuals, 4 members of the PDPA were then elected to parliament in the early 1965 Afghan elections. In Kabul, for example, two PDPA members were elected to the lower house of Afghan’s parliament: Babrak Karmal and Dr. Anahita Ratebzad. An Afghan woman physician, Dr. Ratebzad won through election one of the only four Afghan parliamentary seats in the lower house that were reserved for Afghan women in 1965. Both Karmal and Ratebzad also led the Afghan student demonstrators outside the opening session of parliament which demanded further democratization of Afghan political life and that the open formation of political parties in Afghanistan now be legalized.

But in October 1965, Afghan government troops opened fire on protesting students who were shouting slogans outside the home of Afghan Prime Minister Yusuf; and three of the students were killed. Dr. Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal, the leader of the Hezb-I Demokrat-I Mottarki social democratic party (which was less politically radical than the underground PDPA), was then named to replace Yusef as the new Afghan prime minister in November 1965.

In 1965—the same year that the PDPA was formed—a group of professors and teachers who were led by the head of Theology of Kabul University, Gholam Mohammad Niazi, started the Society of Islam (“Jamiat-i-Islam”). These leaders of the Society of Islam in the late 1960s were on the Afghan monarchical government’s payroll; and the Society of Islam’s student group, the Organization of Muslim Youth, “operated openly, organizing demonstrations and fighting” leftist Afghan students in the late 1960s, before winning student elections at Kabul University in 1970, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History.

Within the radical leftist PDPA between 1965 and 1967, meanwhile, two factions developed: one faction led by Karmal and one faction led by Taraki.; and in May 1967, the original PDPA split apart into two parties calling themselves the PDPA, with each party having its own central committee and general secretary (Karmal and Taraki). Karmal’s PDPA faction/party was called Parcham (named after its newspaper, Parcham/”Banner”), while Taraki’s PDPA faction/party was called Khalq (named after its newspaper, Khalq/”Masses”). Following the release from prison and death in 1966 of the “doyen of Afghan Marxism,” Dr. Abdul Rahman Mahmoodi, some followers of Mahmoodi also formed a smaller pro-Beijing Maoist party in Afghanistan, which gained some support for awhile from Afghan industrial workers that enabled it to lead some strikes of workers in Afghanistan .

(end of part 6. To be followed by “A People’s History of Afghanistan—Part 7: 1968-1976)

This article originally appeared in the Austin, Texas-based Rag Blog alternative news blog.

A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 5: 1933-1953

The U.S. War Machine has been bombing Afghanistan for over 8 years in its endless war against the Taliban regime’s Afghan government. Yet over 80 percent of Afghanistan’s territory in early 2010 was apparently still controlled by the Taliban regime and other armed Islamic guerrilla groups in Afghanistan that are apparently now allied with the Taliban. One reason neither the Republican Bush II Administration nor the Democratic Obama Administration has been able to quickly achieve a military victory in its endless war in Afghanistan might be because most members of the Militaristic U.S. Establishment’s foreign policy-making elite apparently still don’t know very much about the history of the people of Afghanistan.

Nadir Shah’s successor as Afghan King, Muhammad Zahir Shah, sat on the Afghan throne, for example, from 1933 to 1973—although he apparently never received as much U.S. mass media coverage in the USA during his 40 year reign in Afghanistan as did either Queen Elizabeth II or Princess Di of England. But in the 1930s, “fascist intelligence agents…succeeded in penetrating the government apparatus and particular branches of the Afghan economy as `consultants,’ `advisers’ and `experts,” according to The Truth About Afghanistan by S. Gevortom. The same book also noted that:

“The German colony in Afghanistan…greatly increased on the eve of the Second World War…Hitler’s agents Schenk, Fischer, Wenger and Knerlein…infiltrated the war ministry and the ministry of public works of Afghanistan…Nazi Germany managed to spread its influence among tribes in the south of Afghanistan and in the north-western border areas.”

And apparently Nazi agents in Afghanistan encouraged increased anti-Semitism in Afghanistan during World War II; so that the economic situation of the remaining Afghans of Jewish background deteriorated when Zahir Shah’s monarchical government restricted their economic activity to local trading only and removed them from the foreign trade positions some had previously held.

But Zahir Shah’s government did not align Afghanistan with Nazi Germany during World War II. Instead, Zahir Shah's government announced in November 1941 that--like the Irish government of Eamon DeValera--it would remain neutral during World War II.

Yet during Zahir Shah’s forty-year reign, demands for more democratization and modernization in Afghanistan began to also be made by some people in Afghanistan.

A secret society of supporters of constitutional reform and democratization, the People of the Afghan Youth (“ Halqa-yi-Jawani-I Afghanistan ”) was formed and then broken up by the monarchical regime. But after Zahir Shah appointed his uncle, Shah Mahmud Khan, to be the Afghan monarchy’s prime minister in 1945, Shah Mahmud ordered the release of all Afghan political prisoners.

The first student union in Afghanistan , the Union of Students, was then founded in 1946 and its political orientation was liberal reformist and anti-imperialist. The following year, the anti-monarchist, Awakened Youth [“Weekh--Zalmayan’] group of Afghan nationalists was started, which openly discussed the ideal of setting up a democratic republic in Afghanistan.

Then, in 1949, a parliamentary election was held and 40 percent of the elected members of the new Afghan parliament favored democratization and modernization reforms. So, not surprisingly, the Afghan parliament next passed a 1949 law which finally legalized freedom of the press in Afghan society.

Predictably, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History by Angelo Rasanayagam, “the enactment of laws permitting freedom of the press led to the appearance of newspapers and other publications whose favorite targets became the” Afghan “ruling family oligarchy and” Afghan “conservative religious leaders.”

At the same time, between 3,500 and 5,000 Afghans of Jewish background still lived in Afghanistan in 1949--with more than 2,000 of them residing in the city of Herat and deriving their family incomes from the Persian carpet trade or from employment as tailors and shoemakers. But aside from a few wealthy families of Jewish background, most of the Afghans of Jewish background were forbidden to leave the country between 1933 and 1950. After 1951, however, they were allowed to emigrate from Afghanistan.

So by 1966, many Afghans of Jewish background had moved to either India or Israel/Palestine and only about 800 people of Jewish background now lived in Afghanistan; and by 1967 nearly 4,000 people of Afghan background now lived in Israel/Palestine.

By December 1969, only a few dozen Afghans of Jewish background still lived in either Herat or in Kabul; and, in all of Afghanistan, there were now only about 300 Afghans of Jewish background. And by 2005, according to the New York Times, only one Afghan of Jewish religious background apparently still lived in Afghanistan.

At Kabul University, meanwhile, during the early 1950s, the Union of Students “became a forum for free-wheeling debate and attacks on the status quo” in Afghanistan, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History. A Movement of the Enlightened Youth, the TNB (“Tehrik-i-Naujawanan Baidar”), was also started by young students in Afghanistan which, in its manifesto, called for: 1. granting legal rights to Afghan women; 2. a democratic Afghan government which was accountable to an elected Afghan parliament; 3. eradication of official corruption in Afghanistan; 4. the formation of political parties in Afghanistan; and 5. the economic development of Afghanistan’s economy.

After a 1952 demonstration was held by these groups which demanded that people in Afghanistan be allowed to form political parties, however, the monarchical Afghan government prevented any further protest by these dissident political groups. According to Afghanistan: A Modern History, for example, just before a 1953 palace revolution in Afghanistan, the Movement of the Enlightened Youth/TNB group of young political dissidents “was suppressed” by the Afghan monarchical regime and “some of its more vocal leftists were jailed.” The same book also recalled that among the Afghan leftist dissidents imprisoned in 1953 were included Dr. Abdul Rahman Mahmoodi (who was “the doyen of Afghan Marxism”), an Afghan historian named Mir Ghulam Mohammad Ghubar and an Afghan Marxist intellectual named Mir Akbar Khyber.

(end of part 5. To be followed by “A People’s History of Afghanistan—Part 6: 1953-1967)

This article originally appeared in the Austin, Texas-based Rag Blog alternative news blog.

A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 4: 1924-1933

Between January 2009 and late March 2010, nearly 400 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in the Pentagon’s endless war in Afghanistan. Yet the history of people in Afghanistan is still unknown to many people in the USA.

In July 1928, for example, Afghan King Amanullah, for a second time, attempted to enact a series of democratic reforms in Afghanistan by convening a loya jirga—a meeting of Afghanistan’s leading tribal and religious leaders—and urging it to support the following reforms: 1. establishment of a Western-style constitutional monarchy, a cabinet of ministers, an elected lower legislative house of representatives and a nominated upper legislative house; 2. separation of religious and state power; 3. legal emancipation of women and abolition of polygamy; 4. compulsory education for all Afghans; and 5. establishment of co-educational schools.

Most of Amanullah’s July 1928 proposed modernization and democratic reforms were rejected, however, by the members of the loya jirga meeting. So Amanullah then convened a new loya jirga meeting that only included his own political supporters, which then approved all his reform proposals and also banned slavery, declared Afghanistan to be a secular state and legally abolished the use of a chadar or veil by Afghan women. But agents of the UK government in Afghanistan such as T.E. Lawrence (a/k/a “Lawrence of Arabia”) apparently then encouraged the religiously conservative Afghan tribal leaders who opposed Amanullah’s democratic reform program--because it reduced their power, privileges and special influence within Afghan society--to start another uprising against Amanullah’s regime. According to The Truth About Afghanistan book by S. Gevortom:

“In late 1928 by bribery and deception British agents managed to provoke a rebellion among certain tribes in the eastern part of Afghanistan . A British Intelligence agent, Col. T.E. Lawrence, arrived in the north-western province of India. Under the alias of aircraftsman Shaw he became very active in arranging meetings with Afghan opposition leaders and virtually directed anti-government activities in Afghanistan …”

By November 1928 Shinwari Pashtun tribesmen in Afghanistan had burned down Amanullah’s winter palace and were marching on Kabul to overthrow his regime. So after fleeing to Kandahar, Amanullah then abdicated in favor of his brother Inayatullah Khan, before eventually going into exile in Italy. But, ironically, the Shinwari Pashtun tribesman had also burned down the UK government’s consulate in the city of Jalalabad before marching on to Kabul.

So, not surprisingly, British agents then created “another center of rebellion in northern areas of Afghanistan where their henchman Bacha Saquo was operating,” according to The Truth About Afghanistan. The same book also recalled:

“On the eve of his force’s attack on Kabul his envoys had a secret meeting with British ambassador Humphreys to clarify details of the planned seizure of the Afghan capital. On February 28, 1929, the British Daily Mail wrote that Britain’s representative in Kabul, Humphreys, had helped…Bacha Saquo to come to power…Supporting the rebels…British military aircraft time and again violated the air space…British planes flew over Kabul…”

So only three days after Amanullah’s abdication in January 1929, Saquo--a Tajk bandit from northern Afghanistan--entered Kabul with his followers and “seized Kabul, overthrew the…government and proclaimed himself” the Afghan king, according to The Truth About Afghanistan. But, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History by Angelo Rasanayagam, the UK government-backed Saquo then “subjected the city and its…inhabitants to nine month reign of terror” in which there was much looting, pillage and raping of women by his troops.

Not surprisingly, in response to the 9-month reign of terror in Kabul, armed Afghan opposition to Saquo’s regime soon developed within Afghanistan and though, initially, “strongly supported by the imperialist and internal reactionary forces,” according to The Truth About Afghanistan, Saquo did not remain in power for long. After the UK government apparently ended its support for Saquo--and began to back the Afghan tribal army of General Mohamad Nadir Khan and his Afghan clan—Saquo’s troops were soon defeated.

The Afghan tribal army of Nadir Khan and his Afghan clan then occupied Kabul in October 1929; and Saquo and his leading followers were publicly hanged in November 1929--“despite a pledge to spare Bacha Saquo’s life and a promise of safe passage signed on a copy of the Koran by the victorious general,”when Saquo had agreed to surrender the previous month, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History.

Nadir Khan then was placed on the Afghan throne, himself, by his tribal army; and in September 1930 a jirga was convened which officially proclaimed Nadir Khan as Nadir Shah, the new Afghan king. Nadir Shah then built up a regular Afghan army of 40,000 men, opened up the Afghan economy to privately-owned corporations and promulgated a new Afghan Constitution in 1931--before being assassinated by an Afghan high school student in November 1933.

Under the Afghan Constitution of 1931, an autocratic monarchical political system linked to Afghan religious conservatives was re-established and the religious law of the Hanafi School of Sunni Islam was decreed as the official law of Afghanistan. The imams of Afghan mosques were then put on the Afghan government payroll during Nadir Shah’s brief reign and relatives of influential Afghan religious figures were all appointed by Nadir Shah to lucrative government positions.

It was also during Nadir Shah’s four-year reign that the first Afghan higher educational institution, the Faculty of Medicine, was set up in 1932. But, prior to his assassination in 1933, “there was a perception that Nadir Shah leaned towards” UK imperialism too much, because the UK government had “granted him 170,000 pounds” after his seizure of power in 1929, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History.

Following Nadir Shah’s assassination in 1933, the remaining Afghans of Jewish religious background were only allowed to live in Herat , Balkh or Kabul and were prohibited from living in other towns in Afghanistan. In Herat, Balkh and Kabul, Afghans of Jewish background apparently also only now lived in separate neighborhoods from the neighborhoods in which Afghans of other religious backgrounds lived. In addition, after 1933 they were not allowed to leave Herat, Balkh or Kabul without a permit and were required to pay a special yearly poll tax. Between 1933 and 1950, people of Jewish background in Afghanistan were also not allowed to obtain jobs in the Afghan monarchical government’s civil service; and their children were not allowed to attend Afghan government schools.

(end of part 4. To be followed by “A People’s History of Afghanistan—Part 5: 1933-1953)

This article originally appeared in the Austin, Texas-based Rag Blog alternative news blog.

A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 3: 1901-1924

Over 2,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in the endless war in Afghanistan since Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009. But the U.S. mass media news departments still seem to pay more attention to the individual deaths of Israeli civilians in war than to the individual deaths of Afghan civilians in war. Yet--although many Afghans of Jewish religious background emigrated during the second half of the 19th century--in the early 20th century around 12,000 people of Jewish background still lived in Afghanistan. According to the 2007 edition of Encyclopedia Judaica:

“…The Jewish communities of Afghanistan were largely composed of… Meshed Jews…Economically, their situation in the last century was not unfavorable; they traded in skins, carpets, and antiquities…”

Some of the wealthiest Afghans of Jewish background derived their wealth from having special economic interests in neighboring Czarist Russia. But after their foreign investments in Russia were nationalized by the revolutionary government in Russia following the October Revolution of 1917 and Afghan’s monarchical government began monopolizing the foreign trade which had previously been a source of wealth for Afghans of Jewish background, they became increasingly pauperized. So more of them then emigrated; and only between 3,000 and 4,000 people of Jewish background still lived in Afghanistan by the 1930s.

But after inheriting the Afghan throne in 1901, Abdur Rahman’s son, Habibullah Khan, was (like his father) paid an annual subsidy by the UK government—even after a 1905 treaty between Afghanistan and the UK removed the official right of the UK government to control Afghan foreign policy. And Habibullah controlled the Afghan government from 1901 until he was assassinated in February 1919.

During the reign of Afghan King Habibullah, some intellectual criticism of both UK imperialism and the nature of Afghan’s antiquated feudalist society in the early 1900s began to develop. A then-46-year-old Afghan intellectual named Mahmud Tarzi, for example, began to publish in 1911 a bi-monthly newspaper, Seraji-al-Akhbar, that “became a vehicle for his critical views on imperialism, the need for the modernization of Afghan society, and on the resistance to change of Muslim clerics” in Afghanistan, according to Angelo Rasanayagam's Afghanistan: A Modern History.

Then, when Habibullah was assassinated after about 18 years on the Afghan throne, the son who succeeded him on the Afghan royal throne, Amanullah Khan, began to be advised by the anti-imperialist Seraji-al-Akhbar publisher-journalist Tarzi. Both Tarzi and the top Afghan army generals—whose support following his father’s murder enabled Amanullah to succeed his father as ruler—urged Afghan King Amanullah to proclaim the complete independence of Afghanistan on April 13, 1919. But in response to this declaration of Afghanistan’s independence, UK military forces bombed the Afghan monarchical government’s military encampment at Dakka on May 9, 1919, killing 20 to 30 Afghan soldiers and Afghan tribesmen. The Afghan monarchical government then declared war on UK imperialism on May 13, 1919; and on May 15, 1919 the Afghan War of Independence (a/k/a the Third Anglo-Afghan War) began.

After three columns of Afghan troops marched towards India (which was then still a colony of UK imperialism that also included what is now Pakistan and Bangla Desh), British military planes next began to bomb the Afghan cities of Jalalabad and Kabul. The Afghan War of Independence was then soon ended in August 1919 by the Treaty of Rawalpindi, in which the UK government--despite dictating the terms of the treaty-- again officially agreed to allow the Afghan government to control its own foreign affairs and officially recognized Afghanistan’s independence.

During 1919, Amanullah also established a Council of Ministers and appointed Tarzi to be the Afghan government’s foreign minister. Four years later Amanullah also promulgated a new Afghan constitution that was modeled on the 1906 Persian/Iranian constitution, retained his position as King under the new constitution and attempted to institute some democratic reform and modernization internally in Afghanistan. But Amanullah’s 1923 proposals for the emancipation of Afghan women, compulsory education for all Afghans and co-educational schools in Afghanistan were opposed by Afghan’s religiously conservative tribal leaders. At the same time, the independent foreign policy pursued by Amanullah’s government—which had signed a friendship treaty with the government of the neighboring Soviet Union on February 28, 1921-- displeased the UK government.

So, according to the book The Truth About Afghanistan by S. Gevortom, the UK government then “hatched plots,” “resorted to such tried and tested means as bribing” Afghan “tribal chiefs and religious leaders and supplying arms and ammunition to” Afghan “tribes,” and "actively supported the extreme right of the Moslem clergy which was in opposition to Amanullah.” British agents, in the spring of 1924, then “succeeded in organizing a major tribal uprising in Khosta, a region of Afghanistan bordering” on UK imperialism’s then-colony of India. The same book also noted:

“The uprising spread to some other regions of Afghanistan. The insurgents demanded the repeal of progressive laws and reforms adopted by Amanullah’s government and insisted on a pro-British line in Afghan policy.”

Amanullah’s supporters within the Afghan army, however, were able to suppress this UK government-backed Afghan uprising of 1924. But Amanullah still lacked as strong an army or as strong a government bureaucracy as the Turkish leader Ataturk had at his disposal, when Ataturk was able to introduce some secular democratic reforms in Turkey ( during this same historical period). So Amanullah was unable to immediately move forward with his democratic reform program, even after the 1924 revolt in Afghanistan was suppressed by his Afghan army supporters.

(end of part 3. To be followed by “A People’s History of Afghanistan—Part 4: 1924-1933")

This article originally appeared in the Austin, Texas-based Rag Blog alternative news blog.

A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 2: 1876-1901

(This article was previously posted on the Austin-based Rag Blog alternative news blog earlier in the year).

The Democratic Obama Administration’s Pentagon spent nearly a billion dollars in 2009 on the Afghan War contracts it awarded for construction projects that were mostly on U.S. military bases across Afghanistan. Yet most U.S. taxpayers still probably know little about the 19th-century history of people in Afghanistan or about the wars that were fought in Afghanistan during the 19th century.

After occupying Quetta in Baluchistan in 1876 and converting it into a military base, UK imperialism, for example, launched the Second Anglo-Afghan War by again invading Afghanistan. The UK government then replaced Sher Ali Khan as Afghanistan’s king by putting Sher Ali’s son, Yaqub Khan, on the Afghan throne. Yaqub Khan was then forced by the UK government to sign the Treaty of Gandamak in May 1879.

As a result of the 1879 Treaty of Gandamak, the feudalist monarchical regime agreed to let the UK government control Afghanistan’s foreign affairs and establish UK diplomatic missions in Kabul and other Afghan cities. It also gave the British control of large areas of Afghanistan west of the Indus River in exchange for the UK government agreeing to now pay the new Afghan king, Yaqub Khan, an annual subsidy of 60,000 British pounds per year.

But, naturally, most Afghans who lived in Kabul did not support the terms of the May 1879 Treaty of Gandamak and were against giving the UK government so much special influence in Afghanistan. So in September 1879 the UK government’s diplomatic representative in Kabul was murdered “by mutinous Afghan soldiers who had been assigned to protect him,” according to Afghanistan: A Modern History by Angelo Rasanayagam. In retaliation, a British general named Roberts moved his troops into Kabul on October 12, 1879 and forced Yaqub Khan to abdicate. Then General Roberts “became the virtual ruler of Kabul , instigating a rule of terror that was bitterly resisted” until “the British forces found themselves under siege,” by Afghan resistance fighters, according to the same book.

But after being defeated in open battle by Afghan resistance fighters on July 27, 1880 at Maiwand, near the Afghan city of Kandahar, UK troops were finally withdrawn from Afghanistan in April 1881, thus ending the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Yet before withdrawing its troops, the UK government began supporting an Afghan feudal warlord, Abdur Rahman Khan, after Rahman had marched on Kabul and declared himself the new Afghan king in Charikar on July 20, 1880. In this way, the UK government insured that Afghanistan would continue to be a British protectorate whose foreign policy would be controlled by the UK government, instead of being a fully independent state.

Known as the “Iron Amir,” Afghan King Abdur Rahman ruled over people in Afghanistan in a repressive way. Afghanistan: A Modern History described how this British imperialist-backed monarch governed Afghanistan:

“In almost continuous warfare during his 20-year reign, rebellions were punished by mass executions, or deportations, such as the forced resettlement of thousands of Ghilzai Pashtun tribesmen…He established a ruthless police force to subjugate suspected opponents and uncooperative officials.”

Not surprisingly, the UK government whose special interests he served provided Rahman’s repressive regime in Afghanistan with “substantial supplies of arms and ammunition,” according to the same book. And, like the previous 19th-century Afghan kings, Abdur Rahman also was paid an annual subsidy by the UK government during his reign of nearly 20 years. Between 1.2 million and 1.85 million Indian rupees per year were paid to Rahman between 1882 and 1901 by the UK government; and Rahman used a portion of his annual subsidy from the British imperialists to fund his recruitment of the Afghan troops he required to continue to rule people in Afghanistan in an undemocratic way.

(end of part 2. To be followed by “A People’s History of Afghanistan—Part 3: 1901-1924))

A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 1: 1838 to 1876

(This article was previously posted on the Austin-based Rag Blog alternative news blog earlier this year)

The number of U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan has increased from 51,000 to between 70,000 and 100,000 since Barack Obama’s inauguration as U.S. president in January 2009. And there are still between 60,000 and 101,000 armed private contractors--as well as 38,000 combat troops in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force [ISAF] from countries other than the USA-- in Afghanistan in 2010. Yet if you grew up in the USA, your high school social studies teacher was likely to know more about the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict than about the history of Afghanistan.

But although no people of Jewish religious background lived in Afghanistan prior to the 19th century, by the end of the 1840s (after the Anglo-Indian army of UK imperialism which had invaded Afghanistan in 1838 was driven out by the Afghan people in the early 1840s) about the same number of people of Jewish background then lived in Afghanistan as then lived in the United States. As Raphael Patai noted in her book Tents of Jacob, “the number of Jews in Afghanistan in the mid-nineteenth century was estimated at 40,000.”

Yet the aim of the UK government’s military occupation of Kabul between 1839 and 1842, during the First Anglo-Afghan War, was just mainly to prop up an ineffectual and unpopular leader named Shah Shuja, whom the UK government had put in power, in place of Afghan King Dost Mohammad Khan, as Afghanistan ’s ruler.

UK troops in Afghanistan, however, found the Afghan people to be opposed to their presence in Afghanistan; and, between 1839 and 1842, there were “increasingly effective armed attacks on the British garrison” in Kabul, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History by Angelo Rasanayagam. The UK troops were soon forced to retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad, “through narrow mountain defiles and passes in the harshest wintry conditions, with the long columns of soldiers” and their civilian camp followers “being continuously shot at and ambushed by ferocious Ghilzai tribesmen from the surrounding hills,” according to the same book. As a result, around 9,500 (including 600 English officers and their families) of the primarily Indian troops of UK imperialism and 12,000 Indian civilian camp followers lost their lives when they were defeated militarily by people in Afghanistan during the 1839-1842 Anglo-Afghan War.

In revenge for being defeated in the First Anglo-Afghan War, however, UK troops returned to Kabul in 1843 and sacked Kabul . But because of its defeat in the 1839-1842 war, the UK government agreed to invite Dost Mohammad Khan to return to Kabul and resume his position as Afghan King. Twelve years later, on March 30, 1855, a treaty of friendship was signed between the UK government and Dost Mohammad’s feudalist government.

The UK government then started to pay King Dost Mohammad an annual subsidy of 10,000 British pounds to help protect its strategic interests in that area of the world. Dost Mohammad remained on the Afghan throne until 1863; and between 1863 and 1878, Dost Mohammad’s son, Sher Ali Khan, was Afghanistan’s ruling monarch.

After the UK army again intervened in Afghanistan in October 1856 to force the Persian/Iranian government troops that had occupied the city of Herat in western Afghanistan to withdraw, the UK government did not openly intervene in Afghanistan’s internal affairs again until 1876. But as the book Afghanistan: A Modern History noted, “when Disraeli became [ UK ] prime minister, the tacit policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of Afghanistan ended, and was replaced by the `forward policy’…”

(end of part 1. "A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 2: 1876 to 1901" to soon follow).