The memory of Comrade Zia is in our hearts and his example is the torch of our path!

One year has passed since the death of comrade Zia, the founding chairperson of our party. His death was not only painful for his family, members, and supporters of the party, but his empty place is being felt in the communist struggle of the country and the world. He was the objective embodiment and true model of a communist leader and militant, who had achieved revolutionary experience and knowledge in the trenches of national and class struggle. Undoubtedly, his loss will be difficult to recover for our party and the communist movement of the country.

Comrade Zia entered revolutionary struggle, in the early 1960s, during the high point of the revolutionary and communist struggles in Afghanistan and the world. In the mid-seventies and after years of acquaintance with the prominent revolutionaries and militants of that time, Daud Sarmad and Majid Kalkani, he joined the People’s Liberation Organization of Afghanistan (SAMA) and pursued revolutionary struggles with determination and courage.

In the 1970s, with the defeat of the revolution in China, the communist movement in Afghanistan and internationally ebbed and plunged into pessimism and deviations, many abandoned the ranks of the struggle. But fighting the liquidationism and capitulationism, comrade Zia remained in the ranks of the revolution and struggled to revive the communist (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) movement on a clear and principled political line. A significant step in this direction was Comrade Zia’s rupture with SAMA, and his struggle to establish the Revolutionary Communist Cell of Afghanistan and Revolutionary Communist Organization of Afghanistan in the mid-1980s. The Revolutionary Communist Organization of Afghanistan evolved into the Communist Party of Afghanistan in 1991. Comrade Zia emphasized the principle of proletarian internationalism in the development of the communist movement. Our party was formed and developed under the influence of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) in absorbing the lessons of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and in the struggle against the Third Worldist and Hoxhaite revisionism.

Under comrade Zia’s leadership, the Communist Party of Afghanistan worked to unite the country’s Maoist organizations and circles. The unity congress of 2004, which led to the formation of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan, was one such step. Moreover, comrade Zia always advocated solidarity with the international Maoist parties and organizations and the importance of unity for the movement. Comrade Zia paid close attention to the developments of the People’s War in Peru and Nepal, which had created a spark of hope and liberation in the hearts of the world’s toilers. Later, when the Peoples War in Peru collapsed and the People’s War in Nepal was defeated by the domination of the revisionist line, he tried to sum up and analyze the experiences of these revolutions and preserve their achievements. Under comrade Zia’s leadership, our party participated in the international struggle against the Avakianite post-MLM and Prachanda-Bhattarai revisionisms and the Gonzalo thought deviation that led to the collapse of RIM and the defeat of revolutions in Peru and Nepal. After the collapse of the RIM, our party participated in the struggle for the unity and organization of the international communist parties and organizations.

Comrade Zia relentlessly struggled against imperialism, reaction, and capitulationism. SAMA’s capitulationism towards the Soviet social-imperialist’s puppet regime led Comrade Zia to break with the organization. Likewise, he criticized the left organizations, that under the guise of “principal contradiction” crawled under the banner of the Islamic reactionary forces to fight Soviet social-imperialist occupation. After the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by the US imperialism, the same leftist organizations became anti-fundamentalists, and sided with imperialist occupation against Islamic fundamentalism, and pinned all their hopes on the imperialist “democracy”. Therefore, many of these forces participated in the puppet regime and formed legal parties. But our party, under the leadership of Comrade Zia, fought against class and national capitulationism and exposed the opportunistic nature of these parties and organizations.

Our party, led by Comrade Zia, from the very beginning of the US imperialist invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, raised the slogan of the revolutionary people’s war of national resistance, identifying the struggle against the occupying forces and the puppet regime as the principal objective of revolutionary struggle. However, this position of the party was met with a lot of ire from the opportunists, and our party and comrade Zia were accused of ultra-leftism. Moreover, other forces opposed our party and raised the slogan of struggle against the “two obsoletes”; this was, and is, nothing but deemphasizing the struggle against the imperialist occupation. After the agreement between the US imperialism and the Taliban in February 2019, Comrade Zia analyzed the new situation and its consequences. He stressed that with the withdrawal of the US and NATO occupying forces from Afghanistan, the occupation would not end, but that military occupation would largely be replaced by domination of the country by the heavy intelligence-political presence and in that case, the Taliban as a reactionary force dependent on imperialism, would wage war against the puppet regime for better share, in the imperialist orchestrated new satrap regime.

Today, one year after the death of Comrade Zia, the pain and suffering of our people have increased. Under the yoke of the puppet regime, the Taliban, and their imperialist occupying masters, the people are in wretched condition. The intensity and spread of the reactionary war, massacres of defenseless civilians, the new wave of the spread of COVID-19, the environmental degradation and drought, and severe pauperization are ruining people’s lives. While the puppet regime and the Taliban are brutally pursuing their reactionary interests for the redistribution of political power. The country’s youth have become canon-fodder of this reactionary war, and the poor masses are being killed, maimed, and displaced. The puppet regime is in crisis and verging on collapse, the imperialist support so far has helped it stand together. The threat of the Taliban has reduced the regime’s internal conflict and popular protests which has helped the regime to survive so far. To protect its strategic interests in the region, the US imperialism is pursuing the creation of a new satrap regime, which would also include the Taliban, to dominate the country by heavy political-intelligence presence. The Taliban is leading a reactionary war, for getting a better share in the new satrap regime, in the ongoing “peace” negotiations.

In such a situation that our people are burning in the fire of reactionary and imperialist war, we must try to expose this reactionary war and strive to turn it into a revolutionary war against the reactionaries and imperialism, which is the only way to put an end to this wretched condition.

For thirty years comrade Zia led our party’s struggles against imperialism, reaction, revisionism, and opportunism. His relentless emphasis on the principles of communism (Marxism-Leninism-Maoism) earned him the ire of reactionary and capitulationist forces, who after Comrade Zia’s death did not hide their jubilations. Even the opportunists within the party tried to use this opportunity to reduce the party to a dogmatic sectarian sect. The dogmatist sectarian line created serious obstacles for the party. This problem was solved in the meeting of the Central Committee and party units in November 2020 at which the Central Committee and the Politburo of the party were rebuilt.

Comrades, members, and supporters of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan!

One year after the death of the leader of our party, Comrade Zia, we once again pledge that we will earnestly continue the red path of comrade Zia. We pledge to defend Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and to work to promote our ideological-political line and to expand the party organization among the workers and toilers. We pledge to rectify the party style of work and strive against dogmatism and sectarianism.

We pledge to strive for the main objective of our struggle, the expulsion of the occupying imperialist forces and the overthrow of the puppet regime, and to achieve the victory of the New Democratic Revolution and the Socialist Revolution and to struggle for communism.

Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan

18 June 2021

Source: http://www.sholajawid.org/english/main_english/1sal_dargozasht_zia_E_sho27_d4.html