PITTSBURGH--One justification used by Washington for its slaughterous invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is the mistreatment of women there under the Taliban regime. Photos of some women taking off the burkas, or cloth covering their faces, were featured in the big-business press after the defeat of the Taliban government.

Prominent U.S. figures who are women, such as Laura Bush, wife of President George Bush, and U.S. senator Hillary Clinton, have spoken out forcefully in praise of the U.S. "liberators" of Afghan women. They are echoed by Eleanor Smeal, president of Feminist Majority, and much of the media.

Also part of this imperialist war propaganda is the U.S. speaking tour of Tahmeena Faryal, from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). Faryal is getting a hearing. At her public meeting here in Pittsburgh in December, 700 people turned out, including many young women.

From the beginning, the meeting gave the impression that women's oppression arose only recently in Afghanistan. Welcoming the audience, for example, was Esther Barazzone, president of Chatham College which hosted the event. "Women in Afghanistan have suffered deprivation of their rights and dignity for over a decade," she said. It was high time the U.S. military rectify that.

In a similar vein, Tahmeena Faryal stated at the opening of her talk that "the tragedy of women in Afghanistan started with the Soviet invasion" of 1979 and continued "under the fundamentalists."  

'Fundamentalists and terrorists'

"By fundamentalists RAWA means the misogynists, the terrorists, the anti-civilization forces, and those who depend on foreign powers," she explained, echoing imperialist anti-Islamic propaganda.

The 1960s and early 1970s, when king Muhammad Zahir Shah was in power, were a far better time for Afghan women, she asserted. RAWA in fact favors a return to monarchy in Afghanistan as the best way to guarantee women's emancipation: "We believe the former king of Afghanistan is the only alternative." In the meantime, she favors a "multinational peacekeeping force" occupying her country, because "just U.S. troops might appear to be an invasion."

Faryal's main criticism of the U.S. government is that it paid no attention to women's status in Afghanistan prior to the war, and that it approved the placement of Northern Alliance leaders in the new interim regime that has replaced the Taliban. (RAWA strongly opposes the Northern Alliance, which had a brutal record in power in regard to women, just as it opposes the Taliban.)  

Supports massacre of POWs

In the discussion period the RAWA spokesperson was asked where she stood on the U.S. bombing of her country.

"Bombing cannot get the terrorists," Faryal replied, although she noted positively that Washington's bombardments "apparently destroyed some terrorist camps and the Taliban, especially the prisoners at Mazar-i-Sharif." However, she continued, "we condemn the loss of life in the villages."

This fleeting reference to the rural poor in Afghanistan was the only time in her talk Faryal ever referred to the existence of peasants ( not to mention workers) in that country. She focused instead on the urban, middle-class women who broke into medical and teaching professions in the 1960s and won more freedoms in general. These advances, which Faryal attributed to the king's reign, ended "when the fundamentalists came to power and the professional women were forced to stay at home."

At the conclusion of her talk, socialist workers at the meeting handed out flyers announcing a socialist educational weekend on the question of Central Asia and sold the Militant. Quite a few people said they were uncomfortable with the idea that George Bush wants to liberate Afghan women. Some were disturbed by Faryal's comments on the current U.S. war there. Two days later, two women came to the Pathfinder bookstore with a flyer distributed at the RAWA meeting. One of the women, a student from Oman, bought a subscription to the Militant and New International no. 7 with the feature article "Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's Assault on Iraq." Both women returned a week later to participate in a socialist educational weekend featuring Ma'mud Shirvani, Farsi-language editor for Pathfinder Press.  

Communist perspective

At a Militant Labor Forum here the day after Faryal's talk, garment worker Patricia Burns presented a different picture of the roots of women's oppression in Afghanistan and the road to their liberation.

She explained that "the imperialist oppression and exploitation of Afghanistan is the fundamental reason for the situation of women there today--not Islamic religious currents or the former Soviet Union."

Bush's claim to want to liberate Afghan women is sheer hypocrisy, said Burns. In just the first few days of taking office he barred U.S. funds from going to international organizations that even mention the existence of abortion as an alternative and later proposed budget cuts that would deny 200,000 women and children WIC food supplement programs. Before Bush, William Clinton drove through legislation ending public assistance through welfare for millions of women and children.

"So are the same capitalist politicians attacking women's rights here all of a sudden liberators of the women of Afghanistan?" asked Burns. "No. The capitalist class and the politicians serving it have a direct stake in keeping women down around the world. The oppression and superexploitation of women in the workforce and in the home is a major prop of the profit system. That's why the U.S. rulers have consistently backed rightist forces in Afghanistan, including the Taliban at one time and the Northern Alliance, in their drive against not only women but workers and peasants as a whole."  

1978 revolutionary uprising

Washington's involvement with these groups dates back to the 1970s, Burns explained. Afghanistan was affected by the political ferment throughout that region of the world. The king was overthrown in 1973 by one of his relatives, Muhammad Daud. Protests by students, oppressed nationalities, women, and others in the cities continued and deepened, however, and in 1978 a coup overturned the Mohammed Daud regime and the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) came to power.