Mass resistance to Guerrillas Soviet invaders

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Socialist Press has condem- bands, and for the complete ned the Soviet invasion of expropriation of remaining landAfghanistan from the outset. holdings and private enterprise, But in analysing the way without compensation under forward we have also taken the control of elected -commitThe : S oviet Stalinist • has received a body-blow from 1 the mass strikes and protest actions which took place last week in Kabul.

The masses of the petty bourgeoisie and working class of Kabul showed themselves to be almost unanimously unconvinced by the Soviet bureaucracy's self-proclaimed defence of the national interests of Afghanistan against reactionary forces.

To the contrary, they are showing growing militant hostility to the actions of the Soviet army.

The Moscow bureaucracy has been forced to admit the intensity of this opposition, desperately but unconvincingly trying to blame it all on "terrorists and bandits" paid by the CIA or China or Pakistan.

To believe that last week in Kabul it would be necessary to accept that most of the population were imperialist agents.

,. Imperialist agents There is no doúbt imperialist agents of all kinds are active in Kabul, and throughout Afghanistan; but it is not necessary to discover imperialist agents to find the sources of opposition to the Kremlin's tanks.

The repressive policies of the Moscow Stalinists and their puppet government in Kabul create that opposition every day on if is wing saale.

La communist of a proletarian-led opposition. Its most coherent section is clearly animated by profoundly reactionary Islamic ideas.

Its leaflets call for "Holy War" against Soviet imperialism. The demonstrators shouted "God is great!"

And the fact that Soviet tanks and helicopter gunships fire on unarmed crowds in the name of "Communism" and "the Afghan revolution" inevitably füels such reactionary ideas within the mass opposition.

But revolutionaries must see behind the verbal clothing in which the opposition to the Soviet occúpation is covered.

In "fact Radio Kabul speaks, like the opposition, in the name of Islam.

Good Moslems "We are good Moslems" the Stalinist radio declared last week. "We are not against the masses"

The masses can hardly be blamed for finding this hard to believe.

The first mass demonstrations against the Soviet Union and a strike of the petty bourgeois shopkeepers of the bazaar were reacted to by the Soviet authorities by a wave of hundreds of arrests (500 according to official figures including small chidren). This was followed by the shooting of demonstrators, which reportedly left 300 dead and thousands wounded.

The declaration of martial law on Friday February 22 did not control the situation.

Karmal It was followed by the growth of the demonstrations until hundreds of thousands were involved. And the strike of the shopkeepers was joined by the majority of workers in Kabul, especially government employees. • For all its - reactionary thetoric • this. movement expresses. the active striving of the petty bourgeois and even proletarian masses of Kabul for 'their basic democratic and material interests to which they rightly see the Stalinist bureaucracy as being totally hostile.

Against repression

Trotskyists side. with the masses against the reactionary repression by the . Stalinist • And within the mass movement they fight for a programme of democratic and transitional demands. which can win workers, peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie from reactionary, religious misleadership.

The war-mongering of the imperialists is not just empty, sabre-rattling threats. The imperialist leaders and NATO generals have launched a concerted campaign to put their military forces on a war footing.

British and US fleet movements in the Indian Ocean have taken place at the same time as intense diplomatic activity among the pro-imperialist states on its shores. • Beyond deals with the 'Islamic' military dictatorship of General Zia in Pakistan, the US imperialists now propose to trade $100 million of 'aid' in exchange for military facilities in Kenya, Somalia and Oman.

Increase aid

Vance's recent visit to Western • Europe has also resulted in agreements from the French and West German imperialists in particular that they will greatly inclease their "aid' to these three states as well as to Pakistan and Turkey, while they consider deployment of military forces in the air. account of the after-effects of tees. anv withdrawal of Soviet troods in the face of a mounting imperialist backed guerrilla struggle by extreme right wing forces.

The only likely outcome would be the consolidation of a vicious pro-imperialist regime which would perpetuate oppres sion and exploitation in Afghanistan, 'and from which vantage point the CIA could and would seek to foster interventions across the border into the Soviet Union itself, in the hopes of whipping up the Muslim peoples of Soviet Central Asia into anticommunist struggles.

It is for this reason that we do not join the clamour tur "Aroons out of Afghanistan"

HUNTEYA я ла сула We call instead upon the Afghan workers and peasants to organise in their own ommittees and soviets to fight alongside the Russian troops against the right wing guerrilla "In an attempt to rival the military presence of the Soviet bureaucracy in Ethiopia vicupied Eritrea and South Yemen at the mouth of the Red Sea, the US imperialists are looking to greater facilities at the port of Djibouti (lying , opposite Aden, in the tiny Republic of the Afars and the Issars-formerly a french colony, now independent but still a vassal of the French state).

Baltic Sea But the imperialists have not stopped short with threats directed against the oil-producing states of the Middle East, and the Soviet Union beyond them. NATO has surged forward with renewed vigour towards the Baltic Sea and north-west frontier of the Soviet Union.

While capitalist Sweden steadfastly preserves its 'neutrality' (preferring to approach war on the highly profitable basis of supplying arms to other belligerents), both Denmark and Norway have been members of NATO since 1949. (Socialist Press 188 wrongly referred to "'neutral' Norway"-apologies, Ed.)

Yet are CIA-backed Afghan rightist rebels At the same time it is necessary to demand full political rights including the right of assembly and free speech for both the anti-imperialist Afghan masses and the Red Army soldiers.

A programme of agitation should be taken up among the Red Army rank and file-many of whom come themselves from Soviet Central Asia-to press for maximum links with the Afghan masses; the formation of soldiers committees and soviets; and the election of officers.

Such an appeal could begin the struggle to mobilise Red Army resistance to the counterrevolutionarv directives received from their bureaucratic leaders and commanders, and to win the support of rank and file soldiers for the fight for political revolution in the Soviet Union. members of NATO with the specific agreement that no atomic weapons or foreign military bases would be allowed on their territory in peace-time -a concession to genuine Soviet fears of encirclement.

But now moves have been announced to provide new and modern facilities for other NATO powers-above all: to facilitate an air-borne strike across the Soviet border-while a major NATO exercise is taking place in the sub-Arctic regions of northern Norway.

The Soviet bureaucracy has responded to these threatening developments with alarm and anger that has caused consternation among the Finnish bourgeoisie, which has successfully struggled since the second imperialist world war to maintain detente with its powerful eastern neighbours in the degenerated workers' state.

Vigorous statements of Finnish neutrality and concern have found little echo amongst other Scandinavian sections of the bourgeoisie. * The new coalition government in Iceland has specifically stated that it will not take any action to close the NATO base at Keflavik, despite the floods Trotskyists defend the USSR against imperialism. But, as the events in Afghanistan make every day more clear, the Stalinist bureaucracy-far from being an adequate defender of the property relations of the Soviet Union puts them into peril by its policy of bloody repression.

That is why today the tasks of fighting for democratic rights and the material needs of the masses in Afghanistan and the fight to defend the property relations of the USSR from imperialism are both inseparable not only from the struggle, against imperialism but also from the task of political revolution to overthrow the Stalinist bureauçracies in Moscow and everywhere else where they rule.

It is possible to agree with the letter, it not the spirit, of one of Radio Moscow's pronouncements of the week: 'The most reactionary forces in the world have joined in a campaign against the Afghan people"

One of those forces is Moscow Stalinism itself.

But there was evidence last week that the Soviet bureaucracy was profoundly frightened by its inability to control the Afghan people.

Brezhnev clearly began in his statements to open the door at least gingerly to Carrington's proposal for an agreed carve-up ("guaranteed neutrality") of Afghanistan in an agreement between Moscow and the imperialists.

Under such a scheme they must hope Moscow's troops could withdraw not in an undignified retreat before an uncontrollable mass movement but as part of a new reactionary deal between Stalinism and imperialism to divide the world and trample on the democratic rights and material interests of the oppressed masses.

Such a deal is still only on the horizon and it is undoubtedly true that the forces driving towards' a renewal of full scale cold war have received a massive boost in the last two months.

Still, despite the war moves, both Washington and Moscow continue in public to declare their belief in detente.

Pakistan's General Zia of rhetoric from one coalition partner-the Stalinist 'People's Alliance'.

For their part, the Danish Social-Democrats, in their minority government, have merely protested against increasing 'defence' spending in real terms. Their arguments are not of course based on principle, but on the political difficulty of boosting military spending when they are about to impose further cuts in social services. the Dominican embassy, together with the US envoy and diplomats of lesser standing, by the M-19 guerrillas has greatly upset the Colombian regime of President Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala.

This is in part because the influx of the press corps has begun to yield reports that give the lie to Colombia's much vaunted 'parliamentary democracy' and reflect the escalating class conflict in this important South American state.

Between 1975 and 1978 real wages declined by 22% and, according to official statistics, in 1977 93% of the labour force (7 millions) received only 44% of national income-leaving 56% for the other 7%.

1977 saw the first national Strike in Colombia's history and the establishment of the National Trade Union Confederation. (CNS) uniting the four major union bodies, but mass action has been , continually repressed and the working class remains organisationally very weak.

The M-19 guerrillas do not, however, come from the prolétariat.

The group is largely composed of disenchanted members of Colombia's rapidly expanding professional middle class.

M-19 is an odd amalgam. of dissident Conservative and Communist Party members formed in 1974.

Scores of its militants were captured last year, and M-19 is now bargaining for the release of their comrades.

But in 1979 over 60,000 people passed through Colombia's jails with the government admitting to at least 4,000 political prisoners.

It is ciear that only organised mass action on the part of the working class can halt the consolidation of Colombia's 'Constitutional Dictatorship'.

This difficulty has highlighted the long-term planning of the latest NATO manoeuvres. It was in 1978 that the imperialists agreed to increase 'defence' spending by 3% in real terms annually, but it is only now that these measures are having a visible impact, which is emphasised by their anti-Soviet tubthumping in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan.

The imperialist strategy is directed quite clearly towards maintaining a military threat against the Soviet Union and the deformed workers states.

Its significance cannot be ignored, and the fight to defend the Soviet Union against imperialist attack must be taken up by workers in all capitalist states to demand withdrawal from NATO and unilateral disarmament.

Last week's rehabilitation of Liu Shaoqi-the once-reviled "capitalist roader" former state president-and the unleashing of important step in the consolidation of power of right wing Stalinist Deng Xiaoping.

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SOCIALIST PRESS, H'ednesday

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a new wave of purges against the "left" marks an