US Capitalism's Talks With the Dreaded Taliban: A Recognition of Its Crushing Defeat in Afghanistan

The woes of US capitalism are continuing to mount up. The US chamber of Commerce had to leave out the word “capitalism” in the campaign it initiated last October aimed at drumming up support for the private sector and the so-called free market. It found in its research that the term was unpopular with the public, that it was believed by most to represent greed and the rich dominating the poor. Then there were the surveys that revealed that over 35% of the population said they were favorable to socialism.

The US’s unprovoked and illegal invasion of Iraq that followed years of sanctions that denied Iraqi’s the basic necessities of life and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children has killed millions more and not led to any stable solution. The US cannot extricate itself from the Iraqi quagmire.

And now it becomes excruciatingly clear that US capitalism has lost its predatory war in Afghanistan, fought under the guise of rooting out Osama Bin laden and al Qaeda and under the cover of NATO. One wonders what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is doing in East Asia in the first place.

The Wall Street Journal reveals this week that the US has “…facilitated the passage of senior Taliban leaders to Kabul for talks with President Harmid Karzai’s government…” “We have indeed facilitated, to various degrees, the contacts between these senior Taliban members to the highest levels of the Afghan government”, says a NATO (US) official.

This is acceptance of a crushing defeat for US capitalism in Afghanistan despite the attempt to portray it as an intervention to arbitrate between opposing sides.

The Taliban are no longer terrorists and al Qaeda operatives and it appears US capitalism no longer has the motto, “You’re either with us or ‘agin us.” This is quite a shift in orientation.  What do they call it; the recognition of "facts on the ground"?  What some have derisively referred to as a rag-tag band of Mullah’s has proven to be formidable opponents to the mightiest military in the history of human society. It’s not easy to occupy a country, British history in Ireland tells us that.

So now the Pentagon is up for chatting with the former terrorists and al Qaeda supporters. This won’t bode well for the Afghani people or for workers in the US. It certainly won’t bode well for women in Afghanistan. Because US workers have no independent political voice and no independent position whatsoever in the foreign policy decisions of US capitalism, we lost an opportunity when the US government supported these medieval warlords against the more progressive secular regime of Mohammad Nabjibullah in the Afghan civil war. The US, and its ally, the Saudi Monarchy, (you know, the world's most efficient beheaders) gave some $40 billion in money and arms to the Islamic Taliban fighters.  The Saudi monarchy was grateful for US taxpayer funds in their efforts to strengthen ultra right wing religious regimes around the world.

Najibullah as a secular leader formed the Republic of Afghanistan and supported free expression and multiple party elections which is why the Taliban hated him. His regime should have been supported by workers throughout the world which would have weakened his reliance on the Soviet bureaucracy, but the struggle between the former Soviet Union and US capitalism for influence in the region was center stage and workers of the world suffered for it especially in Afghanistan and especially women and girls.

Najibullah was tortured and murdered by the Islamic Taliban and his testicles hung from a lamppost in Kabul according to reports. This is how US tax money is spent.

And now, the representatives of US capital, seeing no victory in sight in Afghanistan, are meeting again with the same Islamic warlords. This week alone there were six “allied” soldiers killed and the Taliban control huge areas of the country; they know they can’t win this.

The Taliban have been asked to lay down their arms but there is no way this will happen given that they are winning on the ground. Members of the Karzai government are now saying they are willing to “ease” these restrictions in order to “kick start” negotiations.“Democratic mechanisms already exist for rewriting the constitution to make smaller concessions to the Taliban.” is the line coming out of Kabul now.

So here we go again. US capitalism is in a quandary and forced to negotiate with the dreaded al Qaeda supporting Talban. Working people have no independent voice and no independent position and we have paid for the Iraq and Afghan ventures through cuts in living standards and public services. For the Afghans; after years of misery and death, they will be abandoned to the Mullahs.

Despite putting a smiley face on these affairs, the strategists of US capitalism are undoubtedly despondent, they know a defeat when they see one whether it’s called a “facilitation process" or not.

It’s no wonder, as we pointed out on the blog earlier, that US and global capitalism is using the Chilean mine rescue to boost its morale. "Capitalism Saved The Miners." was a headline in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. But can the Miner's help save capitalism, the bankers are asking themselves?

Capitalism after all, put the miners down that hole in the first place. Capitalism caused the BP disaster and capitalism caused Katrina. The hunger, disease and misery that is forever present in the former colonial world and growing in the more advanced economies is market driven; they are not natural disasters. And, by the way, there’s no such thing as miracles.

The only reason US capitalism is talking with the Taliban and al Qaeda is it is being forced to; the Afghan affair is even more unpopular with the Europeans. And, as far as US workers and workers throughout the world are concerned, we should recognize what this is, a Powwow between thieves. Too many Americans are dying (dead Afghani's and Iraqi’s don’t count) and there is a growing crisis domestically.

Business Week wrote thirty years ago, “It’ will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow---the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more. Nothing that this nation, or any other nation, has done in modern economic history compares to the selling job that must be done to make people accept this reality."  Business Week, 10-12-74

The idea that capitalism saved the Chilean miners is part of that selling job. But we don’t have to buy it.