First Published: The Call, Vol. 9, No. 2, January 14, 1980.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The invasion of Afghanistan by 100,000 Soviet troops is a blatant and vicious act of imperialist aggression that must be resolutely condemned and opposed by all progressive people.
The brutal occupation of this West Asian country is only the latest episode in the Soviet Union’s long-standing policy of interfering in the Afghan people’s internal affairs. For more than a decade, Moscow has employed a wide variety of subversive tactics, coups and assassinations to foster a client regime and impose its will in the country. Under the guise of carrying out a “democratic revolution,” Soviet planes and pilots have napalmed rural villages, and Soviet “advisers” have committed atrocities against the peasant population.
Organized into contingents of nationalist and Islamic guerrillas, the Afghan people had liberated wide areas of the countryside, won over sections of the army, and completely isolated the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul. The recent invasion and coup, in fact, was Moscow’s response to its desperate situation.
The continuing struggle in Afghanistan, however, has a significance that reaches far beyond its borders. Soviet aggression here is only one component of its overall rivalry with U.S. imperialism for world hegemony, a struggle in which control of the energy-rich region of the Middle East plays an exceedingly important strategic role. Given the general decline of U.S. influence in the area, Moscow’s new surge of expansionism has intensified this rivalry and constitutes a dangerous step in the direction of world war.
The invasion is also concrete evidence of the Soviet Union’s role as the main source of this war. The massive deployment of its own forces beyond the borders of the so-called “Eastern bloc” is only the latest escalation in a series of actions from the invasion of Czechoslovakia to its use of Cuban and Vietnamese troops in Ethiopia and Kampuchea. It serves as a new, grim warning to all those who may have been still taken in by Moscow’s claim to be a champion of peace.
A key question for the American people is whether or not the U.S. ruling class will continue its bankrupt appeasement policy which has facilitated Soviet aggression. As Soviet military trucks built with U.S. assistance rolled into Kabul, the world was given a graphic example of how the ̶economics of detente” serves hegemonism and hastens the outbreak of war.
The Carter administration’s recent partial steps to cut back on these measures only serves to underscore the scope and reactionary essence of a policy that has prevailed in the White House and helped build the Soviet war machine for nearly a decade. It remains to be seen whether popular opinion and the rapidly developing circumstances will compel Washington to fully carry out its embargo against the Soviet Union and lift its arms restrictions against China, Pakistan and other countries in such a fashion as to actually block Soviet expansionism.
For our part, the left and progressive forces in the U.S. must condemn the Soviet invasion and demand the immediate withdrawal of its troops.
The Afghan people’s struggle is just and fully deserving of wide support. Not only are they waging a heroic struggle for national independence against great odds, but they are also on the front lines of a broader fight to defend world peace.