In 1917, the Russian revolutionary government renounced all claims that the czarist Russian empire had on Afghanistan. Two years later, Emir Amanollah, a progressive Afghan leader, signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union and launched a successful war of independence against the British. Afghans celebrate 1919 as the year of independence.

From independence until 1973, Afghanistan was ruled by a monarchy under the family of King Zahir Khan. In 1973, Mohammed Daoud—a member of the royal family—took power, declared himself president and established a republic. Although the monarchy was formally abolished, his reign was increasingly repressive against both Islamic militants and the small but growing communist movement.

In April 1978, the Daoud regime moved closer to breaking ties with the Soviet Union and sought to liquidate the country’s main communist party, known as the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Mounting economic hardships, combined with Daoud’s repression and his moves toward the camp of U.S. imperialism, proved to be his undoing.

On April 27, 1978, the PDPA and progressive members of the Afghan military overthrew the regime of Mohammed Daoud in a military coup. On April 29, hundreds of thousands of Afghanis took to the streets in celebration. Many waved the red flags of the PDPA.

Upon seizing power, the PDPA announced a democratic program that included land reform, growth in public services, price controls, separation of church and state, full equality for women, legalization of trade unions and a sweeping literacy campaign.

The revolution canceled the enormous debts of peasants and started training teachers and building schools and hospitals all over the country. Women could no longer be sold into marriage or executed for so-called “infidelities.” Literacy campaigns were undertaken in the many different languages of the country.

Immediately following the revolutionary overthrow of the Daoud regime, the CIA helped organize counterrevolutionary forces. With Democrat Jimmy Carter as president in 1978, Washington formed a counterrevolutionary army of wealthy feudal landowners and reactionary mercenaries. This army called itself the Mujahedeen. The Carter and later the Reagan administrations called them “freedom fighters.” By early 1979, CIA operatives were assisting Mujahedeen artillery strikes on Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.

It was in this effort to destroy secular socialism and working-class rule in Afghanistan that the CIA organized and financed right-wing anti-communist forces, including Osama Bin Laden, in what was the largest CIA covert operation up until that time. The Republican and Democrats alike were rapturous in their praise of this anti-communist army. It was an army, after all, that was “Made in the U.S.A.”

In the end, the combined pressure of U.S. intervention and the loss of the Afghan revolution’s Soviet allies led to the 1992 defeat of the April Revolution. A civil war between rival factions of the counterrevolutionary army followed, which lasted until 1996.

From 1996 to 2001, the government was led by the Taliban, one of the factions that Washington had armed and trained as part of the Mujahedeen. After a brief period in which the United States backed the Taliban in power, Washington abandoned its old allies when they began pursuing a course too independent of U.S. imperialism.

Using the attacks of September 11, 2001, as a pretext, the U.S. government attacked Afghanistan, overthrowing the government and installing Hamid Karzai, a former CIA asset and Coca-Cola executive, as its puppet.

More info and perspectives on Afghan history at -
Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

 

see also - Afghan Massacre - The Convoy of Death