The Afghanistan Crisis - Imperialist Threat to Peace and Socialism - The African Communist 1980

Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project

See the end of this post for details on the project.

Leaflet: The Afghanistan Crisis - Imperialist Threat to Peace and Socialism - The African Communist 1980

We have already looked at a couple of leaflets (Onward March of Afghan Revolution and On the 20th Founding Anniversary of the PDPA) related to the Saur Revolution in Afghanistan. This one is a statement taken from a 1980 issue of the African Communist quarterly. 

The leaflet looks at the Soviet intervention in support of the Afghan revolution from a very different perspective than the one we are used to in North America. It also notes that the Afghan PDPA government was trying to modernize Afghan society -- fighting illiteracy, working towards women's equality rights, redistributing land and other essential reforms -- in the face of a CIA and US financed campaign of imperialist destabilization that backed deeply reactionary and obscurantist forces that would go on to form groups like the Taliban.

We all know how that turned out.

Two noteworthy passages:

Babrak Karmal stressed that the objectives of the revolutionary council were not to introduce socialism, for which the basis did not yet exist because of the backwardness of the country, but to strengthen the social and political foundations of Afghanistan and ultimately secure the victory of the anti-feudal, democratic, anti-imperialist and anti-exploiting forces. The new government, Karmal said, would strive to end poverty, disease, backwardness, illiteracy, and ignorance, unemployment, and national and social oppression. 

and:

Everywhere America is to be found on the side of reaction and against the forces of liberation, though everywhere she claims to be defending "freedom" and "democracy".

Some things have yet to change. 

(Click on scans to enlarge)

When The Left Chapter began part of what I wanted to do on the blog was to show and highlight vintage public leftist election/political leaflets and booklets. While many of these have been offered with commentary to date, a very large collection of hundreds of them from several different sources remains and to preserve these often quite rare documents we will be posting them on a regular (almost daily) basis now often without or with minimal commentary so that people may have access to them as quickly as possible as an historical resource. 

While these will all be leaflets from a variety of different leftist viewpoints and countries, they are being posted as an historical/study resource and the views or opinions expressed in them do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog or blogger.

All of these posts (as well as posts made to date) will be listed on the page: Vintage Communist/Socialist Leaflets (which is still being updated with past posts).

If you have any public, vintage leaflets or booklets you would like to contribute to this project please contact us via theleftchapter@outlook.com