women, and entrenched power to It is the grim prospect of their bloody revenge that is hold- likelihood of a mujahedin takeover appears more the result of tion and gave a boost to every anti-communist the USA and around the Outlook of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, because the alternatives a mujahedin regime would almost certainly embark upon a ing firm the core troops and police cadres around the beleagured Najibullah regime, who realise they have nothing left to lose in waging a last stand in the towns. Conversely, the Socialist world. the old propertied classes. more by the grasping avarice of traditional bosses, landlords, mullahs and tribal rulers, and by billions of dollars in overt and covert aid and arms from the USA, Iran, Saudi Arabia, pathetic regime in Kabul whose repressive and bureaucratic methods bad made even its formally progressive policies of literacy campaigns, land reform and women's rights increas- some of them fuelled by fundamentalist fervour, but many This right wing victory has been grimly predictable for bureaucracy itself when, under Brezhnev, it set out to solve br brute force the complex political problem of preserving a sym- vears. The seeds of the debacle were sown by the Kremlin Pakistan and the cynical Chinese bureaucracy in Beijing. Nevertheless their? withdrawal represents a° support the Kabul: clear victory for the for- ces of reaction - the bru- tal mujahedin guerrillas, ingly unpopular. regime.
measure of the strength of the divided and dubiously effective mujahedin, whose efforts would be insignificant if not for mas- vasion: but the consequences will be suffered for years to come holds good not only for Afghanistan but also for anywhere im- patient or bureaucratic forces seek to force the pace of change the isolation and collapse of the Kabul regime than any For socialists there is nothing to celebrate in these events. The outcome, like the nine-year war that preceded it, is a defeat for the Stalinist bureaucracy which launched the in- The bitter lesson is that only the self-organisation of the op- pressed, and not the imposition of 'progressive' measures by brute force from above can pave the way for socialism. This Page 1 by the Afghan masses, subjected to mujabedin rule. without reference to the masses. sive external aid. The troops were sent by Moscow bureaucrats to preserve self an infringement of the Afghan peoples' right to self-deter- mination and a setback for the working class internationally. of the working class. The 'Red Army' would have been quite ary movement by Afghan workers or peasants as it was in its the bullet were failing, Moscow master-minded a number of equally disastrous efforts by the various leaders in Kabul to Kabul bureaucrats. The December 1979 intervention was it- Neither the bureaucracy's aims nor their means were those as vicious in crushing any left wing, independent revolution- efforts to crush the mujahedin, There was not a shred of politi- cal principle involved: after it became clear that the bomb and appease the mojahedin - not through any appeal to their peasant base, but through deals with the most reactionary is- The original invasion split even the Stalinist movement and SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 13 March 1989 lamic elements and landlords.
NO EXCUSES Withdraw! Withdrawi. THE DIRTY BOO PENGIN- Ithdraw Ш Verses in Britnin) insists that he is not in favour of burning or banning the book, and considers such actions as un-islamic. He is also reported to be totally against the death sentence censorship caught in Rushdie tide of NO BOOK in recent times has caused such literary and politi- cal uproar as