Afghanistan:The Tortuous Road of Revolution
Afghanistan is a
country which has experienced numerous wars of aggression, uprisings and
people’s resistances. Indeed, the inhabitants of this region have been victims
of wars and armed conflicts throughout the course of their history.
The wars waged by the great adventurers like Alexander
of Macedonia(356-323 BC) and Genghis Khan(1162-
At present, there are seven major
nationalities/ethnic groups, namely the
Pushtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras Turkmens, Baluches, Nuristanis and Uzbecks,
inhabiting this counyry. There are also other ethnic minorities like the
Pashaies, Kyrgyzes, Aimaqs as well as migrants from India (Hindus and Sikhs)
living in Afghanistan. There was a so-called
central government, but local feudal and semi-tribal chieftains, such as
the Khans, Mirs, Arbabs, and the religious leaders (the Mullahs) lorded over
the people up to the 19th century. The central government generally
supported the most powerful khan in an ethnic group and allowed him, all-too-often
the scourge of the land to govern. These Khans and Mirs and Arbabs acted as absolute rulers. The Khans of the
Hazaras were among the most cruel of tyrants. They often sold the children of the peasants who
were unable to repay their slave-debts with their toil. Every year, bands
of Turkmen slave-traders would come to
take these children to the Central Asian feudal rulers. The Khans, with their
mullahs on their side, were absolute rulers of their semi-tribal, semi-feudal
communities. But in the 1880s, Emir Abdurahman(1880-
After the death of
the Emir in 1901, his son Habibullah( 1901-1919)became the King of Afghanistan.
He was far too busy with his huge harem,
concubines and hunting activities to pay serious attention to the country’s
affairs. During his period of reign, he did not bother to consider changes to anything
in the country. In one of his hunting trips he was assassinated .
After the death of
Habibullah, his son Amanulla (1919-1929) was crowned. Amanullah was inspired by the resistance of
the people of Afghanistan against the British colonial aggressors.
He stood up to
British colonialism for the total freedom of Afghanistan. For this; he needed
the support of his country men. Therefore, he relieved the Hazaras from
official slavery and restricted the religious elements as authorities. Moreover,
he attempted to remove some of the prejudices against the non-Pushtun ethnics
groups . Amanullah was also under the influence of bourgeois-democratic
movements then emerging in other parts of the world and made ambitious plans to
reform the country radically. His folly was thinking that social change from
above could be brought about without mobilizing the masses of the people. In a
world of palace-intrigues and conspiracies, one had to be extremely fortunate
to survive such adventures. King
Amanullah however was not that fortunate!
He did not survive
and was overthrown by a commoner called Habibullah Kalakani, Bach-e Saqa (the
son of water-bearer1928). Nine months after the fall of King Amanullah, the
British agent, Nader(1929-1933) and his brothers came to the east and south of
the country. With the help of Britain, they started to mobilize the tribesmen
in order to capture power from Habibullah Kalakani. Nader eventually seized power and executed
Habibulah Kalakani and promised the tribesmen the right to plunder and destroy
the whole of Kalakan. Nader was an
imperialist agent and with his ascend to power began the period of imperialist
domination in Afghanistan. Nader’s mission as an agent of imperialism was to
build a feudal-comprador state. The chiefs of the semi-tribal communities and
feudal lords, the Khans, the Mirs, the Arbabs, the Maliks and the Bigs of each
tribe or community were given full authority to be the representatives of his
government and play the roles of the judges, the juries and the executioners of
the people.
The clergy was
given special privileges. Special posts were created for them in the so-called
judicial system. New posts, such as, Mofti, Muhtaseb were created and the
mullahs were assigned to these posts. Aside from these official posts, mullahs
could report people for violation of the virtues/moral taboos, religious codes
and for other misconduct. When there was a conflict, such as, between two
peasants over a piece of land or a cow, the contending parties were often
‘chewed to the bone’ by the Khans and the mullahs before they could reach the
state authority for a formal discharge of ‘justice.’
In this way, Nader
Shah removed all oversights and loosened his control over the mullahs and local
despots. For the people of Afghanistan, Nader stood as revulsion and abhorrence
incarnate. Eventually, this hated figure
was killed by a Hazara student. This student, then, along with his entire
family and kinfolk, was to pay for his deed in blood, in the most horrific
manner.
After the death of
Nader, his son Mohammad Zaher(1933-1972) was crowned. Zaher; like his father,
pledged his loyalty to imperialism and serve it as faithfully as his father
did. Like his father, Zaher strengthened the position of Islam and the mullahs
by establishing reli-gious schools around the country. Zaher and his uncles had
to finish what Nader set out to accomplish. He reserved places for the big
landlords, influential families, tribal chiefs, robber-barons and other
criminals in his court . These, he promoted to honorary army positions and
provided them with regular salaries and pensions. While military service was
compulsory for every citizen of this country, he exempted the young men from
the Pushtun ethnic group of the south from military service. Moreover, he
appointed the most corrupt Pushtun elements as governors and district-chiefs to
administer the national minorities (Hazaras, Uzbeck, Tajiks, Baluches and
Nuristanis).
He continued to
distribute the land of the Uzbeck, Tajiks and Turkmens in the north to
Pushtun tribesmen
loyal to him. He made learning Pushtu language compulsory for every state
employee. He also made military academy off-limits for the common Hazara,
Uzbeck or Turkmen. Zaher arranged special schools for Pushtun children and
provided them with necessary facilities and accommodation. Special privileges
like scholarship for studies abroad and entrance to the university was provided
for the graduates of these high schools (Rahman Babab and Khosh Hal Khan
Khatack). Steadily, he built a wide network around the royal family out of his
most trusted and loyal servants. Among the Hazaras, the family to which comrade
Akram Yari belonged, was within the web of closest servants of the royal
palace.
By the mid
1940-1950s, resistance to this imperialist lackey and oppressive regime emerged
in the form of small reformist groups. These groups, one parallel to the other,
were preaching morality, virtue and meritocracy. Patriotism and nationalism
under Islam were also rallying calls of some of these groups. But all these
came to an abrupt end when the great shock-waves of the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution from China then reverberating around the world put paid to
a period of reformist mumbling.
Comrade Akram Yari:
a biographical sketch
Comrade Akram Yari
was born in
Comrade Akram
Yari, was Dari speaking, he was sent to a public School in Kabul, called Ghazi
Lyceum. He finished this high-school and continued his higher education at the
Kabul University. He received his university degree in Mathematics and Physics
in 1965. As was customary in Afghanistan in those days, he was employed by the
ministry of education as a teacher and was sent to Naderya High School to teach
Mathematics and Physics.
Very soon, Naderya
High School(named after king Nader) became a focal point of new ideas, which
AkramYari was introducing. He had formed circles of young Maoism supporters
from the students. But the secrete police of the regime had focused their
magnifying glass on him. Yari was marked out as one of the most dangerous enemy
of the system. The Ministry of Education fired him and his name was written in
the black-listed of the regime. From now on he could never be employed by any
governmental organization and institution in Afghanistan.
Com. A. Yari had a
very good knowledge of the English language.
When he was a high-school student he studied “Das Kapital” (The Capital)
by Karl Marx in English. With that level of proficiency in the English language
he could easily find another job. Soon, he was employed by the Afghan Insurance
Company in Kabul as a translator and calculation co-worker. After some years,
he resigned and returned to his home village. He built a small house with two
rooms inside the compound of his
father’s property and made an agreement with his tenant-farmers.This
agreement was very
simple. The farmers must provide him with the products of their labor, enough
for two persons. In the same time, in the whole central Afghanistan, the
farmers were receiving only one fifth (1/5th.)
of the total annual production.
Comrade A. Yari
settled down among the farmers and married. He always wore a simple local
outfit. Unlike other nobles of the district, he walked a distance of almost
twelf kilometers, to and fro, every day
from his house to the center of the district and sat there on the ground with
the peasants, shepherds and farmers, writing (legal) defense papers for them,
defending them against the local despots and usurers. Soon, he became known
as the people’s advocate among the
peasants and the poor people.
In 1978 his
daughter, was born and Comrade Yari became a father. In the winter of 1978 the
“Khalqi” and “Purchami” (the two factions of the pro-Soviet ruling party)
regime ordered his arrest and sent armed troops to detain him. They then brought him to AGSA (Afghanistan’s KGB,
the secret branch of the police) and according to their own statement tortured
him to death.
During his short
life, Comrade Yari showed that he was a born
rebel. Though he is not among us now, his loyalty to the cause of the
proletariat and the oppressed and to the communist ideology of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (Mao Tse-tung Thought in those days) and devotion to
the people is a great lesson for all of us to learn from.
A prince who became a Maoist
leader
Mr. Abdullah Yari,
the father of comrade Akram Yari, was the chief director of Dare Shekari Highway Construction Project
and one of the most loyal servants of King Zaher’s court. Mr Ahmad Ali Baba,
one of comrade Yari’s uncle was an army general, commanding Afghan-istan’s
frontier armed forces in the east of the country. He was one of the most
trusted generals of General Khan Mohammad Khan the minister of defense of
Afghanistan as well as a blood relation of King Zaher. Mr. Nader Ali, his other
uncle, was the king’s national advisor, a senator and the head of King’s
special team to represent the loyal family’s interest in the senate. There were
numerous colonels and brigadiers belonging to his family in the king’s army. Yet
the rest of the Hazara people ( the ethnic which comrade Yari belongs to) were
not allowed to serve in the king’s army above the rank of sergeant and
privates.
While the rest of
the Hazara’s were persecuted because of their ethnicity and religion, the
feudal family to which comrade Yari belonged to was enjoying such a high
position in the
social hierarchy.
While there was not even an elementary school in a place with a pop- ulation of more than 10
thousand people, his eldest brother was sent to the Unites States for higher
education.
However, the
Hazara mass was crushed not only under extreme prejudice, but also through
back-breaking high taxes. A shepherd had to pay tax for each and every goat and
sheep, a farmer had to pay taxes for his each and every cow, calf and donkey. This
was called “Malia ber Mawashi, meaning Aniaml taxes). Under such conditions the Hazara masses had no other
choice but to take up arms and rebel which at last they did. Against this
background, the ruling class and the king appointed Comrade Akram Yari’s uncle,
Senator Nader Ali to crush the armed rebellion and prove his loyalty to his
majesty’s court. One of the biggest
conspirator minds
of all time in Hazara history had been utilized to broker peace between an
extremely oppressive regime and an outrageously oppressed people. In this
episode, Nader Ali, brought Mohammad Ibrahim, known as Bache Gawsawar (son of
cow rider), the leader of the insurgents to Kabul and made to kneel before the
king and beg for his life.
King Zaher did not
kill him but, exiled him to the north of the country to suffer from hunger and
deprivation.
Around the same
time, there was another development; this took
form in the south of Hazarajat, the same district where comrade Yari was
born. This happened when another uncle of comrade Yari stepped forward to save
the king’s oppressive reputation. It was not more than three decades ago when
Hazara slavery was officially banned. These people were
considered as
low-castes, living in the grazing land
that belonged originally to the Pushtun tribes. The Pushtun nomads who were
using central Afghanistan as their grazing lands, were
continuously in
conflict with the Hazaras. The Pushtun
nomads were protected by the local
government and they used to look down upon the Hazaras. In the Southern most part of Hazarajat, one night, a
couple of Pushtun armed males entered a Hazara-owned shop, murdered the grocer and robbed his shop. This
event provoked the uprising of the Hazaras in Jaghuri.
Rajab Ali Khan,
another uncle of Comrade Akram Yari, (the brother of the General and Senator
Nader Ali) was the local chief of the Hazaras in Jaghuri. The people took the
corpse of the murdered shop-keeper and
went to see him. Rajab however went to Kabul before the people could arrive at
his castle.
Following these events, the Hazaras of Jaghuri
took up arms whereby tens of thousands of them attacked the Pushtun nomads,
known as the Jawhari Tribe.
King Zaher and his
court knew that the only loyal servant he could rely on in Hazarajat was in Akram’s family. This family had always
stood on the king’s side even when practically the entire Hazara nationality
was up in arms against the king and his oppressive regime. The king summoned
Abdullah Yari, Akram’s father, who had just completed the construction of the
Dara-e Shikari Highway Project to the court. Abdullah Yari who had blood
relations with the local despots of Malistan and the feudals of Mohammad Khwaja
Hazara in Qarabagh,(the descendant of Gulistan Khan) Nahur, Talkhak, Kakrak and
Jighattu, was in the center of a spider’s
web. For the royalty, having Abdullah Khan Yari on the king’s side meant
having all the local despots and landlords on the government side. Abdullah
Yari took his youngest son Akram who was not older than 11 to the court. To
reward the big landlords and despots of the Hazaras for their services and in
breaking down the Hazara resistance, the king prono-unced comrade Yari “ a
prince” . Hence, comrade Yari become a prince with all the privileges
that a prince
could enjoy.
The Hazara
uprisings and the extremely high taxes that a Hazara family had to pay every
year disturbed comrade Yari’s elder brother comrade Sadeq Yari. This led him to
search for a solution to the problem. The search brought him in contact with
the then Afghnaistani revolutionaries. Sadeq Yari pursued his search until he
discovered Marxism. When Sadeq went to the faculty of medicine, he came in
contact with other Marxist revolutionaries of those days. He found the answers
to his problems then and nothing was going to stop him reaching a solution. But
his father was dead-scared of what young Sadeq Yari was thinking. Sadeq Yari
told his younger brother, Akram what he had discovered. The young Akram, a high
performer in high school, went about researching for himself. He came across
Mao Tse- tung’s works. This was a
turning point for him, and indeed a well-spring of sparkling fresh water
in the desert for a thirsty person!
The two brothers
then turned their backs on their class-privilege and cut off their social
contacts with their relatives and indeed their ties with their family. Comrade
Sadeq Yari, later martyred, was a brilliant student, who after his graduation
became a physiologist and an assistant professor at the faculty of medicine at
the Kabul University. Comrade Akram Yari who had by then given his heart to the ‘have-nots’ and social
revolution did not continue with his studies after obtaining his university
degree.
The Progressive Youth Organization(PYO)
In the mid-60s,
when the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China was sending shack-waves
across the world and the Naxalite armed revolution made the ruling classes in
south Asia tremble, Afghanistan too was shaken by the fluttering red flag of
Shole Jawid (the Enternal Flame). Behind the Shole Jawid was an organization
called Progressive Youth Organization (PYO). This organization was connecting
and organizing the radical students and intellectuals in Kabul high schools and
the revolutionary movement at the Kabul University. The activists of the
PYO carried out revolutionary activities
throughout the country. Thousand of
students in different high schools in the provinces were absorbed and activated
in revolutionary activities.
By 1968 political
class consciousness had reached Fabrica Jangalag and other industries. The
Maoist movement at Kabul University had inspired the workers to rise up. Very
soon the workers in the mining sector in the north of the country laid down
their tools and started to march towards Kabul. This shook Afghanistan as never before. The
panic-stricken King Zaher called the feudal chiefs and aristocrats to rescue
the sinking ship of the system. He ordered a reshuffle of the cabinet of
ministers and made some cosmetic changes to the system.
While the workers
from the north were marching to join the students in the capital and the
peasant masses were staging revolt against the landlords in the rural areas,
the Khalqists and the Parchamists (pro-Soviet political groupings) were
preaching “peaceful co- existence” with the king and the big landlords. For
such a situation to unfold into a revolution, the pro-letariat must have an
experienced and seasoned vanguard party to lead the masses to overthrow the
social system, but the proletariat in Afghanistan had only a small under-ground
organization which was carrying three political lines in it. They were:
1-
Maoism (then Mao Tse-tung Thought) as
represented by Akram Yari.
2-
a Centrist political line, represented by Dr.
Hadi Mahmudi.
3-
an Economist political line, represented by Dr.
Faiz Ahmad.
The struggle
throughout the country could have achieved victory if there had been, at least
relative internal unity in the party. But PYO did not enjoy this relative
unity. Moreover, some of the well-known PYO cadres and Shole Jawid activists,
such as, Ishaq Negarger (Moztereb
Bakhtary) and Engineer Osman gave in to
threats and harsh conditions of prison-life.
In the meantime,
Comrade Akram Yari was at school, from
Without Akram, the Maoist line within the
Progressive Youth Organization could not maintain its revolutionary existence. Real
revolutionaries have often been the minority in many parties or organizations. On
the other hand, those who deviated from the truly revolutionary line often became the majority.This was what
happened in the PYO. Very soon, the economist political line announced their
split from the organization and PYO ceased to exist.
The flame has not waned
The Khalqists and
the Purchamists killed thousands of Shole Jawid leaders and activists. This
massacre of the Maoists and other successors of the Shole Jawid legacy
underlines a very important point: when there is no vanguard party, the
revolutionaries can very easily be sought out and killed off. Mao said, “Without a revolutionary party,
there can be no revo-
lutionary
movement.” When there is no revolutionary movement and hence no armed cou-nter-attacks, the revolutionaries do not
have a safe place to live in. This was the situation for the Maoists and the
other revolutionaries in Afghanistan.
Almost all of the
Maoist leaders, top as well as middle-rank cadres, were killed in the first one
and half year after the Khalqists and the Purchamists took power. The economist
trend of the New Democratic Movement was represented by Dr. Faiz Ahmad since
the PYO split took place in 1976-77. While
the original fraction under the leadership of Dr. Faiz Ahmad formed the
Afghanistan Liberation Organization (ALO), the split-off fraction came under
the leadership of Abdul Majid Kalakani
which formed an alliance with other small nationalists, dualists and
Islamists , the Afghanistan People Liberation Organization (SAMA). SAMA was
called an organization even though it was in reality, a loose coalition of
different trends. There were some low-rank remnants of Maoists from the PYO in
SAMA, but they did not have, nor could they have played, any significant role
in the coalition.
Neither SAMA nor
ALO was inclined to take a radical left stance against the two main poli-tical
currents, the pro-Soviet Khalqists and Parchamists on one side and the
Islamists on the other. Both advocated activities pertaining to Islamic
activities. ALO formed the Islamic Strugglers Mujahideen Front and SAMA took
Islamic position in its “Position Documents” .Both these groups emphasized the
Islamic Republic in their official documents. Abdul Majid Kalakani was captured
by the Soviet intelligence service, the KGB, and executed and Dr. Faiz Ahmad
was assassinated by Hezb-e Islami of Gulbuddin Helmatyar,.
In the first half
of 1980s SAMA surrendered to the Soviet forces and ALO started to physically
annihilate its disaffected members. This was the key feature of these
coalitions owing to the prevalence of a fundamentally erroneous line in a
dynamic situation as obtained in Afghanistan: surrendering to the enemy and
physical annihilation of comrades-in-arms.
Such practices were the end of a long process that really started inside
the PYO.
Both SAMA and ALO
split. The Hazara branch of ALO came to form the “Organization of Workers Socialists of Afghanistan” and the
Hazara branch of SAMA ended with the formation of Afghanistani Revolutionary
Communists Center”. The latter one joined the International Revolutionary
Movement (RIM)) and later formed the Communist Party of Afghanistan.
In the years1997 –
This Maoist
center, being unable to participate in discussions about the Draft program of
the Communist Party of Afghanistan with the two other small organizations,
agreed that the Communist Party of Afghanistan would write the draft while the
Europe-based center with the RIM’s line would
contribute to the Draft Program by sending its views. After the Draft
Program was approved by the Congress of the Party however, it became apparent
that none of the opinions given by the pro-RIM center was in the final draft of
the program. The leader of the Communist Party denied receiving the views. The
points which the CP(M)A and the MLM Center disagree upon is to far to be
discussed in this article.
Later on, the
leader of the Communist Party developed the differences towards antagonism and
tried to solve it through threats and intimidation. In 2004, the leader of the
then communist party (Communist Party (Maoist) of Afghanistan now) of
Afghanistan nevertheless admitted that he had received some of those criticisms
and requested six months to answer them. But from April 2004, up till August
2006, he did the very opposite, working as hard as he could to marginalize as
well as demonize the leaders of the Maoist center abroad among the party
circles and supporters.
In the first plenum of the party, they adopted
a resolution which declared that discussion is with the center is out of the
question. They have to accept all decisions taken by us or they are not with
us. Their activist in Europe started chatting through unsafe internet channels
with every one about the decision of the CC plenum. This person was announcing
this news through writings, chatting and calling people by telephone. This made
the Maoist Center of Europe to announce their split in August 2006. There was
no ideological struggle, no internal debate and even no discussion possible and
even the representative of RIM broke off his relation with the Maoists in
Europe.
The Maoists of
Afghanistan know that the international communist movement (ICM) stands on the
cross-roads. From here, the communists throughout the world will be divided
into two One will jump on the wings of
the storm of the coming revolution and will surely march ahead and become
immersed in revolutionary change while the other who might remain behind,
indulging in melancholic nostalgia. The Maoists of fghanistan will not allow
them -selves to be the residue on the banks of the surging mighty river of
great changes: national liberation, social upheaval and transform- ation. They
will strides ahead to emancipate all of humanity from the stranglehold of
capitalist imperialism. As far as the Maoists of Afghanistan go, the name of
Comrade Akram Yari will be in their throats, thundering against human slavery
in whatever form, indeed class society itself.
Afghanistani
Maoists
26th.
December 2008