Dear CCI friends,
We all have watched the fury-set-in-motion in Afghanistan over the past few days. So, so tragic!
Thursday’s scores of deaths at the airport are absolutely deplorable … At the same time, we read that an estimated quarter of a million Afghan deaths have been ignored during the past 20 years. Could this be so?
John Pilger gives a remarkable picture of what Kabul looked like before our forces destabilized the changes in Afghan life during the Soviet era. Were there downsides to the life the Soviets offered? No doubt, yes. They were outlawing the tribal religions, educating young women, etc. Afghans were joining the rest of the world it seems from Pilger’s photos. It is hard to believe that Afghanistan wasn’t always a country of clerics wrapped in desert cloth with women in burkas.
Read and weep over what might have been possible in Afghanistan …
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
The Great Game of Smashing Nations
More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the U.S., Britain and their “allies” destroyed.
August 24, 2021
By John Pilger
As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.
In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shah. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.
Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported The New York Times, were surprised to find that “nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup.” The Wall Street Journal reported that “150,000 persons … marched to honor the new flag … the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”
The Washington Post reported that “Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned.” Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the government declared a program of visionary reforms that included equal rights for women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.