Karl Carlile wrote: >In many ways then the Taliban's success in establishing a state in the >extraordinary >way that it has is the only way possible given the tremendously >contradictory nature >of Afghanistan. In many ways it constitutes an extraordinary achievement >on the part >of the Taliban. In so far as the Taliban is despotic and ruthless it is >not because >this is its wilfully subjective predilection. It is because objectively >this is the >only way, under the narrow constraints that prevail, in which a state can >exist in >Afghanistan. This is the only way, given the extraordinary circumstances, >in which >the Afghani state can exist. The Taliban state is not a capitalist state. >Consequently it inevitably bears an entirely different character to the >bourgeois >state.
I generally agree with Karl's analysis, but there are some points I'd like to make: 1) there was a unified -- and unifying -- state in Afghanistan before the Taliban. (It was also modernizing, educating women, etc., which stimulated the ire of the fundamentalist men.) This, of course, was destroyed in the Russo-Afghan war. 2) there is some commodity exchange that crosses the whole of Afghanistan. The media point to smuggling as a major economic activity. Some of this -- or most of this -- is opium, part of the world market. 3) the Taliban isn't just a product of the pre-capitalist and thus fragmented nature of Afghan society. It's also a result of the civil war that followed the Russo-Afghan war, in which the various elements of what's now called the Northern Alliance fought with each other, while raping and pillaging and changing sides. Many people in Afghanistan -- plus, I am sure, the US policy-makers -- saw the Taliban as restoring order, something necessary to everyday normal life. 4) one of the advantages that the Taliban has is that it's of the dominant Pushtun ethnicity. 5) I think that one of most likely results of the US war against the Afghans is that the civil war will return. The UN will be given the job of reconstructing society and of supporting whatever government is imposed. Since the UN is so under-funded, Afghanistan will be yet another Africa-style "basket case," too poor for much of anything (except opium production). The Taliban will survive, perhaps as two or three different guerilla groups (that hate each other). Of course, my predictions regularly turn out to be wrong. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
