UN SECOLO DI INTERVENTI MILITARI DEGLI USA
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This compilation was
revised on March 23, 1999. For more information or with comments and additions
please contact: Zoltan Grossman, 1705 Rutledge, Madison, WI 53704, Phone/fax:
(608)246-2256. mtn@igc.apc.org
This is a partial list
of U.S. military interventions from 1890 to 1999. This guide does NOT include
demonstration duty by military police, mobilizations of the National Guard,
offshore shows of naval strength, reinforcements of embassy personnel, the use
of non-Defense Department personnel (such as the Drug Enforcement Agency),
military exercises, non-combat mobilizations (such as replacing postal
strikers), the permanent stationing of armed forces, covert actions where the
U.S. did not play a command and control role, the use of small hostage rescue
units, most uses of proxy troops, U.S. piloting of foreign warplanes, foreign
disaster assistance, military training and advisory programs not involving
direct combat, civic action programs, and many other military activities.
Among sources used,
besides news reports, are the Congressional Record (23 June 1969), 180 landings
by the U.S. Marine Corps History Division, Ege & Makhijani in Counterspy
(July-Aug. 1982), and Daniel Ellsberg in Protest & Survive. 'Instances of
Use of United States Forces Abroad, 1798-1993' by Ellen C. Collier of the
Library of Congress Congressional Research Service.
Some recent history of Afghanistan
In Bush’s Sept. 14
speech, he lamented about the oppression of the Afghani people, especially the
women, whom he said are forbidden to read and write. What Bush conveniently
didn’t mention is the U.S. government’s direct involvement in creating those
conditions of oppression. He also left out that the Afghani people would be the
direct victims in the coming U.S. war.
The reactionary
elements now ruling Afghanistan worked with the CIA to overthrow a progressive,
socialist Afghani government that came to power in 1978. Even before the Soviet
Union intervened in 1979 to defend the revolutionary Afghanis, the CIA was
deeply involved in pouring billions of dollars in military weapons to destroy
the fledgling government by arming reactionary elements like the Taleban and
Northern Alliance (see Z. Brzezinski interview other side). After a bloody war
that killed thousands of Soviets and Afghanis, the U.S.-backed reactionaries
won.
Washington was
unconcerned as its proteges went on to butcher Afghani progressives, restore
landlordism and repress women while fighting among themselves.
The defeat of the
socialist forces signified a catastrophe for the people of Afghanistan. Today,
U.S. support for the Northern Alliance against the Taleban is nothing more than
the continued cynical use of one reactionary force against another reactionary
group now in power, in order to further destroy the country and take complete
U.S. military control of Afghanistan for corporate oil interests. A look at a
map shows Afghanistan as the most direct path to the oil-rich region of
Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The U.S. is now pressuring
those former Soviet republics to permit permanent U.S. bases on their soil.
Following is a
little-known history of how the U.S. strangled the 1978 popular revolution
against feudalism and imperialism that took place in Afghanistan. The same U.S.
government which spent tens of billions of dollars to destroy the Afghani
revolution is not carrying out its newest war to restore women’s rights or
resolve the terrible economic and social crisis of the Afghani people as a
whole.
Geopolitical interests
and the vast potential oil profits of the Caspian area are the driving forces
behind Bush’s slaughter-bombing of one of the poorest countries in the world.
It is critical for all people who support justice to oppose the U.S. bombing
war of Afghanistan or any other country.
In 1978, Afghanistan
was ruled by the reactionary government of Mohammad Daoud, which was close to
both the shah of Iran and the United States. On April 26, 1978, this government
arrested almost the entire leadership of the People's Democratic Party of
Afghanistan (PDPA), a party of young revolutionaries formed in 1965. There had
been a huge funeral procession just a week earlier for a murdered member of the
PDPA. The new arrests were seen as an attempt to annihilate the Party just as
the military junta had done to the workers' parties in the CIA’s 1973 coup in
Chile.
An uprising by the
lower ranks of the military freed the popular leader of the PDPA, Nur Mohammad
Taraki. The soldiers actually broke down his prison walls with a tank. Within a
day, Daoud was overthrown and a revolutionary government proclaimed, headed by
Taraki.
This uprising of the
soldiers and the city masses, many of them low-paid civil servants in a country
with very little industry, was every bit as glorious as earlier revolutions
against feudal tyranny in Europe. It held the promise of breaking down the old
traditions based on oppression and fear.
The leaders of the PDPA
were educated, although some, like Taraki, came from very poor families. They
had been to Kabul University, some had studied abroad, and they yearned to
bring enlightenment and material progress to Afghanistan.
The U.S. CIA began
building a mercenary army, recruiting feudal warlords and their servants for a
"holy war" against the communists, who had liberated
"their" women and "their" peasants. The U.S. spent billions
of dollars every year on the war.
The only country in the
area ready to help the Afghani Revolution was the Soviet Union. The USSR
intervened militarily at the behest of the Afghani revolutionary government.
But it could not defeat the CIA’s well-armed counter-revolutionary force. The
Soviet Union finally withdrew the troops in 1989 as the shift to the right
within the USSR became critical.
The U.S. war in
Afghanistan began in 1979. It continued long after the last progressive
government in Kabul fell in 1992. The recent stage has been an orgy of
destruction as rival reactionary groups fought for control of the capital, now
mostly destroyed.
More than 2 million
Afghanis have been killed in this struggle, and millions more made refugees.
Now half the remaining population -- the women -- have been returned to the
status of property without a single human right. A poor man unable to pay his
debts can have his hand cut off for theft. The schools and clinics built by the
revolution are in ruins. The Taleban—the current government of Afghanistan—is a
fundamentalist group supported by Pakistan that was trained and armed by the
U.S. CIA.
This is the hideous
face of counter-revolution. Afghanistan has been dragged back more than 100
years. But it was the most modern weapons and communications systems, made in
the USA, that killed the progressive dream of a generation of Afghani social
revolutionaries.
Unocal, together with
Delta Oil Co. of Saudi Arabia, is working on building both a gas and an oil
pipeline from Pakistan to Turkmenistan via Afghanistan. In 1996, Chris Taggart,
executive vice president of the company, said these projects are "now more
likely to succeed than they were two weeks ago [before the killings of
remaining Afghani progressives]." These are multi-billion-dollar projects
that promise huge profits to the transnational oil companies.
Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National
Security Adviser under Carter,
from Le Nouvel
Observateur (France), Jan. 15-21, 1998:
Brzezinski: . . .
According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began
during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, Dec.
24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise:
Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive
for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that
very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in
my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate
of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired the Soviet entry into
war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn’t quite that.
We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the
probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their
intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret
involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them.
However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That
secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the
Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?
Conditions for Women in Afghanistan's History
Conditions in
Afghanistan have not always been as they are. What authority bears witness to
this? None other than the U.S. Department of the Army itself.
"Afghanistan-a
Country Study" for 1986 has of course the anti-communist line expected of
a Pentagon publication. But it also contains useful information about the
changes instituted by the 1978 Afghani Revolution.
·
Among the first
decrees of the revolutionary regime were to prohibit bride-price and give women
freedom of choice in marriage. "Historically," said the U.S. manual,
"gender roles and women's status have been tied to property relations.
Women and children tend to be assimilated into the concept of property and to
belong to a male." Also: "A bride who did not exhibit signs of
virginity on the wedding night could be murdered by her father and/or
brothers." The revolution was challenging all this.
·
Young women in
the cities, where the new government's authority was strong, could tear off the
veil, freely go out in public, attend school and get a job. They were organized
in the Democratic Women's Organization of Afghanistan, founded in 1965.
·
Before the 1978
revolution, 5% of Afghanistan's rural landowners owned more than 45% of the
arable land. A third of the rural people were landless laborers, sharecroppers
or tenants. Debts to the landlords and to money lenders "were a regular
feature of rural life," says the U.S. Army report. An indebted farmer
turned over half his crop each year to the money lender. "When the PDPA
took power, it quickly moved to remove both landownership inequalities and
usury," says the Pentagon report. Decree number six of the revolution
canceled mortgage debts of agricultural laborers, tenants and small landowners.
·
The revolutionary
regime set up extensive literacy programs, especially for women. It printed
textbooks in many languages-Dari, Pashtu, Uzbek, Turkic and Baluchi. "The
government trained many more teachers, built additional schools and kindergartens,
and instituted nurseries for orphans," says the study. Before, female
illiteracy had been 96.3 percent in Afghanistan. Rural illiteracy of both sexes
was 90.5 percent.
·
By 1985, despite
a counter-revolutionary war financed by the CIA, there had been an 80-percent
increase in hospital beds. The government initiated mobile medical units and
brigades of women and young people to go to the undeveloped countryside and
provide medical services to the peasants for the first time.