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whến her territories and istan-and the reactionary peoples became tennis balls impact of Stalinism on in the 'great game' between Soviet policy-go back to Afghanistan has been economic advance there is is the news since the extremely localised it-wing army 'revolu- morning and evening but Demonstrations in Kabul only a-handful of proper ppled President divided: there are-over 30 It installed a government living languages.

Troops in kabul Kabul suffers traffic jams outside the capital there are It" remains greatly mutually incomprehensible Taraki This very backward country is set at a strategic crossroads, with over 1,000 miles, of northern frontier with the USSR, a similar length with Pakistan, a major border with Iran and a tongue 'of mountainous territory reaching out to touch China.

Poverty stricken

Under these conditions, politics in Afghanistanincluding the relations of class forces within it-are necessarily shaped by the pressures of much greater powers-mihtary, political and economic This is inevitable for, a country in such a position, so poverty-stricken that its national income ($2 billion a year) is approximately what the US spends on dry food.

Afghanistan has been a 'buffer state? at least since the early 19th century, Tsarist Russia and the British empire in India.

In the period after World War 1I the Soviet Union has devoted great effort and resources (since about 1954) to influencing Afghanistan.

"Neutrality'

She serves as a counter to the attempts by US and British imperialism to militarity encircle the USSR's south-west flank-originally through the Baghdad Pact treaties of 1954-55, following the CIA's overthrow of Mossadegh's anationalist regime in Iran.

The Soviet Union was then threatened by a ring of US bases in Turkey, Iran, Iraq (intil the 1958 revolution') and Pakistan.

Afghanistan's pro-Soviet neutrality, sealed i by Kruschev, and Bulganin's ceremonial visit in December 1955, was the break in this chain.

"There is no doubt" Kruschev recalled, "that if the Afghans hadn't become our friends, the Americans would have managed to ingratiate themselves with their 'humanitarian aid' as they call it.

The amount of money we spent on gratuitous assistance to Afghanistan is a drop in the ocean compared to the price we would have had to pay to counter the threat of an American military base on Afghan territory"

Kruschev Remembers Since then, the USSR has been the main provider of aid-especially with roadbuilding and the exploitation of natural gas in the northern border area.

And, even before the coup this year, the USSR provided 90% of equipment and training, and thousands of "advisers', for the armed forces. (Up to force consisted ta as en force consisted of a. dozen biplanes of World War I vintage!)

Throughout more than twenty years of close and generous "peaceful coexistence'. , however, the Soviet leadership never tried to do other than use Afghanistan as a 'buffer state'.

Effectively illegal

They never gave any real support to movements against the religious despotism that ruled the country.

The Communist Party, for : example, remained effectively illegal while the Soviet Union cultivated ultra-friendly relations both with King Mohammad Zahir and, after he was over‹thrown in 1973, with his cousin, President Daud The Soviet Union's involvement" with Afghanthe earliest days.

The first Soviet leader to organise minary ald to neip aid di binten *Afghanistan resist British imperialism (Leon Trotsky in 1919) did so as part of the Bolsheviks general drive to help the Moslem masses of Asia and the Near East emancipate themselves.

But by 1928, with the advance of Stalinism in the Soviet Unien, the Afghan Kipg Amarullah was the first monarch to be received on a state visit to Moscow.

*Progressive monarch' Fifty years almost to the day before the coup in April, this year Pravda (already transformed into Stalin's obedient mouthpiece) welcomed him as one of. the most 'progressive monarchs. in the Fast' as he arrived from his grand tour of western European capitals.

Amanullah did have a policy of modernisation and mild reforms.

But in 1929 he was overthrown by a British-backed tribal-religious " revolt (though not before rescinding his reforms in the attempt to stay in power).

Thereafter relations with the Soviet Union were cool until the 1950s.

In the last few years, however, quite new pressures have come to bear.

Since the mid-1960s, there have been sporadic strikes and demonstrations by students… änd small groups of workers, mainly in Kabul.

New importance And the Indian Ocean has taken a new importance in the intesnational military balance,. with the USSR getting military facilities in South: Arabia and north east Africa, and the US building new bases in the Indian Ocean and attempting to reconstruct a Pakistan -Iranian military axis.

The Soviet Union has for years supported the Afghan claim to Pushtumistan: a state to unite the Pushtus in Afghanistan (the biggest nationality in the country) with those in eastern Pakistan, and give landlocked Afghanistan (and thereby the USSR) a corridor to the Indian Ocean.

Pakistan and the US, of course, oppose the scheme.

Before he was ousted President Daud conducted close talks with the Palestinian government (both President Bhutto and, after he fell, military dictator Zia) on the Pustifunistan claim.

This may well have caused Moscow to think they needed in Afghanistan a more energetic counterweight to American power.

In any event, the armyCommunist Party coup in April got the full support of the USSR, and caused the CP factions to sink their divisions.

Thus when papers such as the Daily Telegraph inform. their Tory readers that Afghanistan is 'going Communist' because it is infested-with thousands of Soviet advisers, they are not pointing to anything new.

Soviet influence has been strong for years. From the British press such alarm is ironic: for well over* a hundred years British imperialism unsuccessfully tried to 'pacify" Afghanistan for use against Russia.

The ignominious retreat from Kabul' (1842) stands as a monument to British military incompetence, dressed up as public-school heroism.

What the alarmist reports in the western press very probably do signal is the desire of the US and Britain to . torpedo the Taraki government. • and recover some influence (if not a client state) in Afghanistan.

Parallel

They will be prepared to mobilise the most backward and feuda. elements of society to do this. D:H0::00:: •Not only do they wish to retrieve their strategic positions; they are also worried at the possibility of a revolutionary impact on the working masses of the neighbouring states.

The Taraki government has promised land reform at the exact same moment as the Shah's dictatorship in next-door Iran being shaken by mass opposition.

Neither the Soviet Union nor the Afghanistan government: have a policy to 'sovietise the country.

But ihey cannot leave it as it is.

There is a parallet with earlier events in Tibet, the even more backward coun try at the other end of the Himalayas, during the 1950s.

The Chinese workers. state reclaimed Tibet in 1950 (as an 'autonomous' region) but for over eight years Peking Stalinism peacefully coexisted with the serf-owning tyranny of the Dalai Lama and his Buddhist aristocracy.

Strong pressure

Only when the CIA sponsored , an 'independence fevolt against their authority, in 1959, did the Chinese Stalinists destroy the old order and imposefor example-any significant land reforms.

Tibet has now been 'structurally assimilated' to the Chinese Stalinist state.

Although Afghanistan, of course, is not legally part of the Soviet Union, the pressure for Moscow to bring it under firmer and more direct control is real and strong. :

But in doing so the Stalinists and their allies in the state machine are fearful of arousing the masses.

The unleashing of real struggles-on the land and for national rights-would release forces they could not easily bring under control or use as a bargaining counter with imperialism.

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ge SOCIALI SS, Wedn апиату 1980