“Efforts for Peace:” Another Way to Intensify Conflicts and War in the Country

In a recent trip to Kabul, the NATO general secretary in a joint press conference with the president of the puppet regime announced:

“We have not set a timetable for withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan. We will stay here as long as needed. Therefore, it is better than the Taliban should stop killing and should start negotiating with Afghanistan’s government.”

The above statement was made while Zalmay Khalilzad, representing the US government, was pursuing negotiations with the Taliban’s office in Qatar and both sides have made commitments to continue the dialogue. However, this was not the first meeting between the two sides. Since 2010 several rounds of negotiations on different issues including ending the war and achieving peace in Afghanistan have taken place. The fact that differentiates this negotiation with those that took place behind the closed doors during the past 8 years is its openness.

Conversely, the Afghanistan Peace Conference––hosted by Russian imperialists and including the participation of representatives from 10 Asian governments, the Taliban, the Afghanistan High Peace Council, and an American diplomat residing in Moscow and representing the US government––took place.

The Afghanistan High Peace Council is a creature of the puppet regime and thus serves the regime and its imperialist patrons. Therefore, this group represents the interests of the puppet regime in the Moscow Peace conference. Therefore, the Taliban’s refusal to sit in a face to face meeting with the puppet regime has clearly cracked. Now it is highly probable that in the near future a more direct meeting between the Taliban and the puppet regime will occur.

At the same time, disregarding the low-rank of the US representative in the Moscow conference, it is apparent that Americans cannot afford to not participate in such meetings. Thus, the initial opposition of the Americans towards the Moscow Peace Conference was not serious and soon changed to attendance as an observer. It shows the fracture of the US’s monopolistic attitude towards war and peace in Afghanistan which is an illustration of America’s declining influence in the region. The proposal to postpone the presidential election of the puppet regime as a gesture of goodwill towards the Taliban is another sign of the US’s weakness in Afghanistan. Although it is unlikely that it would become the official position of the American government, even mentioning it, like their direct negotiations with the Taliban, is deepening, strengthening and expanding the illegitimacy of the puppet regime; if it was implemented it would intensify the illegitimacy of the puppet regime.

Now the issue is not whether direct negotiations between the puppet regime and the Taliban would begin or not since that is a possibility. Rather the issue is that the start of the negotiations would not automatically result in ending the war and establishing peace. Several years of negotiation between the Islamic State of Afghanistan, under the leadership of Rabbani-Massoud, and the Taliban did not result in ending the war. Experience shows that such negotiations in Syria and Yemen have not yet resulted in ending either war.

On the contrary, it is clear even now that the objective and subjective intensification of contradictions in Afghanistan and of the international and regional situation related to it has resulted in efforts for peace as another sphere of the struggles for securing their imperialist and reactionary interests in Afghanistan. At the same time, even fake or real efforts for peace are characterized by preventing a direct military confrontation between big and small powers.

International and domestic efforts for so-called peace in the current conditions of Afghanistan is another excuse for intensifying war in the country, apparently for gaining further concessions in future rounds of negotiations. Therefore, if this negotiation occurs in the future the process of negotiations would result in an intensification of war for the purpose of gaining concessions behind the negotiating table. The sum of this situation would add new dimension to the conflicts in Afghanistan.

The active re-engagement of the Russian imperialists in the affairs of Afghanistan, through the Moscow Peace Conference, have not decreased conflict but have further complicated the situation. Russia wants to reestablish and expand the historical influence that the Soviet social-imperialists once possessed in Afghanistan. As an internal factor the Taliban, more than the puppet regime, carries the historical responsibility of re-engaging Russian imperialists, yesteryear’s occupiers, in the conflicts of Afghanistan.

On the one hand, the American imperialists’ efforts in Afghanistan is directed towards subjugating Afghanistan and its peoples. On the other hand, these efforts are directed towards preventing the expansion of Russian imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism in Afghanistan.

This is a situation where American imperialism is on a declining course, its political and military partners gradually distancing themselves from the superpower leading the alliance. If the European imperialist powers would be able to establish a European military, the formation of an imperialist bloc between the US and Russia would be completed and the world would be further polarized. This situation would not decrease global and regional conflicts, including the conflicts in Afghanistan, but in contrast it would increase the avarice of Russian imperialists towards Afghanistan.

Therefore, the problem of war in Afghanistan is still far from reaching a solution; there remains a long journey ahead to achieving peace and stability in the country. It is our historical mission to struggle for bringing forward an alternative and strong revolutionary and national resistance against the occupying forces so as to break the monopoly of the reactionary armed resistance of the Taliban in the struggle against occupying forces and their satraps, and to also deprive the occupiers of their legitimating efforts by drawing on the historically archaic character of this resistance, particularly for the public opinion in the US, so that the resistance of the peoples of Afghanistan, similar to the resistance of Vietnamese people, can ignite a strong anti-war movement in the US.

Translated from Sholajawid #19, November 2018

Source: http://www.sholajawid.org/english/main_english/translated_sh19_D4.html