Children among 100,000 executed in south Korea

A horror long known by Koreans was confirmed earlier this year: large numbers of children were among the 100,000+ Koreans murdered by the U.S.-backed south Korean government in the 1950’s.

Korea, a country with a history that goes back thousands of years, was taken over by the Japanese in the early twentieth century. After years of brutal occupation, and a sustained struggle against the occupation, the Japanese were defeated in World War 2 and forced to relinquish their hold of Korea in 1945.

The USSR and the U.S., temporary allies in the war against the Axis, each agreed to station troops in one half of the peninsula until the Koreans could organize their own government.

All across the country workers and farmers, inspired by the resistance movement against the Japanese occupation, began to set up the frame work of a grass roots democracy.

At the same time, the U.S. government installed Syngman Rhee, a right-wing exile who had been living in the United States, as president of the south in a phony election, ignoring the national government being set up by the Koreans themselves.

Syngman Rhee embraces Douglas MacArthur, General of the U.S. Army, upon being made leader of south Korea.

A government was unilaterally proclaimed in the south prompting the forces in control of the north, made up largely of leaders of the Workers’ Party of Korea (who played a large part in the fight against the Japanese occupiers) proclaimed a government as well.

The government of the south, largely unpopular and propped up by the U.S. military, began a vicious campaign against all suspected “leftists” (at a time when a majority of the people in both the north and south looked held “leftist” ideas or at least looked at them favorably).

From that point until the end of the Korean War, in which the north tried to unify the country under its leadership, at least 100000 Korean men, women and children were executed in cold blood by the Rhee government and U.S. military.

Decades later, after a series of U.S.-backed dictatorships in the south, a liberal President, Roh Moo-hyun, created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in December, 2005, to investigate crimes carried out before and during the war.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission later released findings supporting the testimony of Koreans who witnessed the mass killings. So far, more than 24 mass killings have been verified.

The Commission found that the murderous campaign was carried out in an attempt to prevent an imminent popular uprising against the Rhee dictatorship. To eliminate any potential enemies–both then and in the future–whole families of suspected leftists were murdered.

In Namyangju, government forces murdered more than 460 people, including at least 23 children under the age of 10.

One survivor, Kim Jong-Chol, 71, recalls that “when the people from the other side (north Korea) came here, they didn’t kill many people,” in contrast to his own government in the south which carried out “indiscriminate killings.”

The remains of hundreds of bodies have been found in ten mass graves. In one cobalt mine in the south, 107 bodies have been found. An estimated 3500 more still remain.

Recently declassified documents from the U.S. military show that U.S. officials witnessed or participated in many of the killings and sanctioned others.

The Associated Press has reported on military documents that show U.S. military officers took pictures of “assembly line-style executions” outside of Deajeon, where upwards of 7000 people were shot and dumped into mass graves.

Another file shows that a U.S. officer gave the go ahead for a south Korean military unit under his command to murder 3500 political prisoners.

Surviving relatives of those killed have demanded an apology from the U.S. government. Meanwhile, the U.S. embassy in south Korea refuses to even comment on the situation.

The United States maintains a force of tens of thousands of soldiers and loads of heavy weaponry in south Korea to this day. A “National Security Act” created in 1948, which makes it illegal to promote “anti-government ideas” (among other things) and carries a maximum sentence of death, also remains in effect.

The 1965 Revolution in the Dominican Republic

In 1965, the workers and farmers of the Dominican Republic poured into the streets, arms in hand, with the goal of  creating a truly democratic, independent country. Under the leadership of the heroic Francisco Caamaño, they successfully held off U.S.-backed right-wing forces, and even members of the U.S. military itself for some time,  although unfortunately, they were eventually defeated.

Background
The Dominican Republic was colonized by the Spanish after Christopher Columbus landed there in 1492. Other than a few brief stints under French, Haitian and independent self-rule, the country effectively belonged to Spain until 1865. It was in that year that Dominican rebels finally won lasting independence after years of waging a “War of Restoration.” But this independence did not last long, as the country traded one colonial power for another.

The Dominican Republic

In 1905, the United States government took over the administration of the country’s customs authority after several European powers sent warships to the capital city of Santo Domingo to demand repayment of loans given to the earlier government of Ulises ‘Lilís’ Heureaux. The U.S. Bureau of Insular Affairs gained receivership of Dominican customs and the U.S. became the sole foreign creditor of the country. It was through this act that the United States laid the ground work for turning the Dominican Republic into a neocolony, under its complete economic control.

Over the next few years, as various sections of the local rulers battled for control of the Dominican Republic, U.S. capitalists poured money into the country’s sugar cane industry. In 1914, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson demanded that a president be chosen, saying his country would impose one otherwise.

Heureaux-Juan Isidro Jimenes, a wealthy capitalist who made his money in the tobacco industry, was elected but faced demands that he appoint a director of public works and financial adviser from the United States and create a new military under the command of U.S. officers. The Dominican Congress refused these demands and began proceedings to impeach Jimenes. Desiderio Arias, the Minister of War, staged a coup in 1916, which the U.S. used as a pretext
to invade.

On May 15, 1916, U.S. Marines landed in the Dominican Republic. After a brief period of fighting, they controlled the entire country. The Dominican Congress elected a President, but he was replaced by a U.S. military dictatorship after he refused to meet the demands of the U.S. For the next several years censorship was intense, critics of the foreign dictatorship were arrested, and individual peasants were forced off their lands to make way for the expansion of huge sugar plantations.

Throughout the U.S. occupation, bands of peasants from the eastern part of the country called gavilleros waged a guerrilla war against the occupiers. The U.S. created a National Police force, which still exists to this day, to fight the guerrillas.

Gavilleros.

The U.S. occupiers finally withdrew in 1924, but only after insuring all laws passed under their dictatorship would stay intact and control of Dominican customs would remain in their hands.

In May of 1930, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, the leader of the ‘Dominican National Guard’ created under the U.S. occupation and self-described ‘Number One Anticommunist’, took power in a sham election. For the next three decades, this admirer of Hitler and Mussolini would rule over the country with U.S. backing, oppressing the population while enriching himself.

In 1961, the U.S. government became concerned that Trujillo’s brutal rule would unite the workers and farmers of the Dominican Republic against him, prompting a revolution similar to the one that had occurred in nearby Cuba a few years earlier. On May 30, Trujillo was assassinated under the direction of the CIA.

The U.S. government then maneuvered Joaquín Balaguer, a protégé of Trujillo, into power. Popular pressure soon forced him into exile and brought new elections.

In those elections, which took place in 1962, Juan Bosch, a liberal poet and long time enemy of Trujillo was elected president.

Bosch carried out minor land distribution and nationalizations aimed at stemming the revolutionary aspirations of the Dominican Republic’s workers and farmers, but also banned communist parties. But despite his allegiance to maintain capitalism, his refusal to unquestioning go along with the plans of the U.S. government was enough reason for them to remove him. A neocolony, even a capitalist one, attempting to determine its own future was simply intolerable.

In September of 1963, right wing officers in the military forced Bosch from power with full U.S. backing.

The revolution begins
After Bosch’s ouster, the U.S. government helped set up a military dictatorship under the guise of a ‘civilian  triumvirate.’

This dictatorship was lead by General Elías Wessin y Wessin of the Centro de Entrenamiento de las Fuerzas Armadas (Armed Forces Training Center or “CEFA”) – a 2,000 strong force of military specialists, originally established under
Trujillo. Among its other repressive policies, the dictatorship proclaimed that “The Communist doctrine, Marxist-
Leninist, Castroite, or whatever it is called, is now outlawed.”

Francisco Caamaño, leader of the constitutionalistas.

Workers continually carried out strikes in protest of the dictatorship until finallyon April 24, 1965, a group of soldiers, led by Colonel Francisco Caamaño, rose up and took control of the government. The soldiers and their supporters, known as constitutionalistas for their support of the constitution which had been scrapped upon Bosch’s overthrow, took to the streets. Before long, they had seized all major television and radio stations, as well as the National Palace.

In the earliest stages, the demands of the constitutionalistas were simple: the restoration of the constitution and the
return of the elected president. Instead of meeting the demands, the CEFA launched a counter attack, in which many workers and farmers were killed.

‘When the people ruled.’ Armed Dominican workers and farmers in the streets of the capital.

As the constitutionalistas took steps to defend themselves, through distributing arms to the general population and
organizing organs of defense, they began to transform society. Through their struggle, the workers and farmers began to discover that the only way to make the country truly independent and democratic would be to take control of things themselves and break from the grips of imperialism.

Unwilling to risk another revolution in ‘their backyard,’ the U.S. imperialist rulers decided to act.

Initially, the U.S. established a military presence in the Dominican Republic by setting up a landing strip it claimed it would use to evacuate U.S. citizens from the country. As the rightists of the CEFA suffered defeat after defeat (resulting in their eventual withdrawal to their base in San Isidro), the U.S. beefed up its presence, sending in 42,000 soldiers and blockading the country with 41 warships – again under the pretense of ‘protecting foreign citizens,’ even though none had been killed or even injured.

The U.S. was then pressured some of its puppet governments throughout Latin America send in troops to help with the counterrevolution. On top of the tens of thousands of U.S. forces, several thousand arrived from Brasil, Honduras, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and El Salvador.

Stating the plain truth, Caamaño was quoted as saying “The war would be already over if the U.S. had not intervened.”

Armed populace in the street during revolution. Sign in background reads "Yankees get out."

The invaders were able to bring an end to the revolutionary government after a few months of fighting, mainly by cutting off the constitutionalistas in the capital through the creation of a fake, supposedly neutral “safety corridor.”

Despite the fact that the revolutionary forces had been forced from power, resistance to the occupation continued for the duration, until the U.S. forces decided to allow supposedly “democratic” elections in 1966, in order to alleviate some of the anger of the Dominican people.

The aftermath
Joaquín Balaguer was returned to power in the fraudulent elections of 1966. Shortly thereafter a new constitution was put in place that officially guaranteed some democratic rights, though it was more often than not disregarded.

Balaguer was “elected” again in 1970 and 1974, both times after his armed thugs forced the main opposition to withdraw from the elections.

Joaquín Balaguer.

Balaguer, whose brutality rivaled that of his teacher Trujillo, sold off the country piecemeal to the highest bidder. Under his rule, paramilitary death squads targeted the slum-dwelling workers and farmers that made up the base of the revolutionary movement. His henchmen destroyed popular movements and workers organizations while U.S.-based capitalists bought up land and local industries.

As the Wall Street Journal reported on September 9, 1971, “the [U.S.] embassy has done nothing publicly to dissociate itself from the terror. The U.S. continues to provide substantial aid, training, equipment, and arms, to the Dominican police and army.”

In 1975, Juan Bosch correctly stated “This country is not pro-American, it is United States property.”

Caamaño returns
After the revolutionary government was brought to an end, Francisco Caamaño came under attack. After a series of threats on his life, he was violently attacked by armed thugs at the Hotel Matum in Santiago. Soon after, he fled the country, landing first in England, and later, revolutionary Cuba.

In 1973, after years of staying off the radar, Caamaño returned to the Dominican Republic by boat with a band
of rebels who planned to start up a nationwide movement that would lead to the overthrow the hated Balaguer and the establishment of an independent, democratic republic.

The rebels quickly made their way to mountains. From there, they aimed to gradually link up with workers and farmers across the country and carry out a nationwide revolution. Unfortunately, things did not work out as planned. After a series of initial mishaps and weeks of brave fighting, Caamaño was martyred by Balaguer’s repressive forces on February 16, 1973.

Today, Caamaño is a hero to the toiling Dominican masses, who see in him the sacrifice and struggle desperately needed to completely the tasks originally set out upon in 1965.

The struggle continues
Today, the Dominican Republic is not much better than it was under the rule of Balaguer, and in many ways, it’s much worse.

Politically motivated murders by the repressive forces of the state and paramilitary thugs are the norm. Prisons are
absolute hellholes and suspects are held over fires and smothered by police to elicit confessions. The situation for Haitians, most of whom come to work for slave wages on sugar plantations, are even worse, with many being beaten, raped, jailed and even killed.

A group of shacks of the type typical in the Dominican Republic today. It will require the revolutionary reorganization of society to solve problems like these.

Women, who make up most of the workers in the ‘free trade zones’ are often forced to work long shifts for pennies and are frequently sexually abused by their bosses. If they become pregnant, most are fired. Overtime is often mandatory, and doors are chained shut so workers cannot leave.

Workers across the country are fired, and even physically attacked, for attempting to form or join unions. Workers with known affiliations to unions have been blacklisted and some businesses refuse to recognize unions outright.

Around 30 percent of the population of the Dominican Republic live under the official poverty line, eking out a meager existence on less than $2 (USD) a day. One in ten Dominicans dwells in extreme poverty, living on even less. One in five Dominicans of working age is unemployed. Nearly one out of three workers under the age of 24 is unemployed.

There is only one doctor per every 949 people. Many lack access to clean water. Power outages lasting several hours occur on a regular basis.

Forty-seven of every 1,000 children born in the Dominican Republic die before reaching their first birthday. Tens
of thousands of children work in sweatshops, on plantations and as prostitutes. Over 15 percent of the population cannot read or write.

The only future that millions of Dominicans see is through immigration to another country, usually the United States.

Revolution is the only solution
An alternative to participating in elections is needed to solve the immense problems of the Dominican Republic.

The first and most important task is to complete the tasks of the 1965 revolution and free the country from the domination of the U.S. imperialists by any means necessary.

As an immediate outgrowth of that, the oppressed and exploited masses must fight to take power and organize a
truly democratic political and economic system. In other words, the working class must rule, instead of the U.S. capitalists ruling through their local agents. It is only under such a system that the issues facing the toiling masses of the Dominican Republic can properly be addressed.

Revolution and counterrevolution in Afghanistan

In 1978 the Saur Revolution swept across the central Asian country of Afghanistan uprooting backwards social and property relations and liberating women from domestic slavery, abuse and extreme oppression.

Background
Afghanistan is a country with a long and complicated history. Throughout the years, it came under the influence of  many different groups, from the Kushans to the Iranians to the Greeks to the Mongols.

Map of Afghanistan today.

The Durrani empire was established in 1747, with a man of Pashtun ethnicity named Ahmed Shah Durrani at its head. Besides a very short period in 1929 when a Khan named Bacha-i-Saqa briefly overthrew the government and named himself emir, every Afghan leader belonged to Ahmed Shah Durrani’s tribal confederation.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the people of Afghanistan fought against the British imperialists several times resulting in various parts of the country falling under British control.

The borders of modern Afghanistan resulted from a combination of of those battles and competition between the British and Russian Empires.

In 1921, after army leader Amanullah Khan led a successful uprising, Afghanistan formally won its independence from the British.

In 1933, Mohammed Zahir Shah became king after his father was assassinated. He instituted a few reforms, such as limited education for women, but also showed great indifference towards the country’s toilers, as could be expected.

While infrastructure crumbled and famine lead to thousands of starvation deaths, Zahir Shah used the country’s
resources to have castles built for himself in Kabul and Italy.

Zahir Shah ruled until 1973, when he was overthrown in a bloodless coup led by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan.

Instead of naming himself king, Daoud broke tradition and proclaimed Afghanistan a republic, with himself as president. He was originally backed by Parcham, a reformist faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA), because he promised to introduce a number of progressive, democratic reforms.

Instead, Daoud’s rule was marked by increasing repression, including the arrests and executions of numerous revolutionaries and the closure of the newspapers of both the Parcham and the more revolutionary Khalq factions of the PDPA.

Demonstration in support of the PDPA. Photo held by marchers is of Nur Muhammad Taraki, first president of Afghanistan after the Saur Revolution.

The factions of the PDPA, which formed in 1965 and split from each other two years later, finally reunified in 1977, with the encouragement of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The Saur Revolution
In late 1977, students and workers in the capital city of Kabul rose up against the oppressive Daoud government, but were put down by the police. After the rebellion, Daoud had several members of the PDPA jailed.

In January, 1978, another uprising broke out as thousands of Afghans demanded the release of the jailed PDPA members. The police were unable to put down the rebellion and so the army was called in to smash it.

A few months later, in March, Mir Akbar Khyber (also known as “Kaibar”), a leading member of Parcham, was murdered by government forces. Tens of thousands of Afghans gathered soon after to listen to speeches delivered by leaders of the PDPA. Daoud was frightened by this display of popular support for the PDPA,and ordered its leaders imprisoned.

By the time the Daoud’s forces had got around to jailing one PDPA leader, and putting another under house arrest,
the Saur Revolution had already broken out.

PDPA members in the military, with the support of tens of thousands of others, began an uprising against the Daoud
government on April 28, 1978.

The uprising started at the Kabul International Airport and spread to the capital of Kabal within twenty-four hours. It
was there, on April 28, that revolutionary forces stormed the presidential palace and overthrew Mohammed Daoud
Khan.

Upon taking power, the revolutionaries took to the radio to declare, “For the first time, power has come to the people.
The last remnants of the imperialist tyranny, despotism and the royal dynasty have been ended.”

Two days later, hundreds of thousands of Afghans marched through the streets waving red flags and celebrating
the victory of the Saur Revolution.

Revolutionary measures
The revolutionaries moved quickly to establish the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, with a Revolutionary Council at its head, and a provisional democratic program that guaranteed the legalization of trade unions, equal rights for women and the separation of church and state.

In the years leading up to the Saur Revolution Afghanistan was a reactionary nightmare for the large majority of its residents – especially women, who were fundamentally the property of their fathers or husbands to be bought and sold.

Prior to the Saur Revolution, there were only 35,000 workers employed in manufacturing in Afghanistan, while
there were some 250,000 mullahs who existed as parasites living off the poor masses.

There were no railroad tracks or highways to speak of and malnutrition and starvation was the norm.

Only 10 percent of men and 2 percent of women could read.

The average person lived just 40 years, and half of all children died before reaching the age of five.

In contrast, in the neighboring Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan nearly 100 percent of the population was
literate and life expectancy was 70.

The revolutionary Afghan government began carrying out revolutionary measures to combat the problems facing the toilers of Afghanistan almost immediately.

The first step was to construct schools and hospitals across the country, and to train doctors and teachers.

As Saira Noorani, a female Afghan doctor, recalled in the Observer in 2001, “Life was good … Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go wherever we wanted and wear what we liked.”

Kabul University after the Saur Revolution. For the first time in its history, a majority of the students at the school were women.

The revolutionary leadership also canceled the massive debts that the poor peasants owed to the loan sharks and
landowners.

They also began a sweeping land reform policy, to take arable land out of the hands of the exploiting mullahs – who
controlled 42 percent of it, and necessary irrigation systems, and put them into the hands of the peasantry that actually did the farming.

In doing this they met huge resistance from the mullahs who saw their easy ride on the backs on the poor coming to an end.

The mullahs raised reactionary counterrevolutionary gangs that carried out vicious acts of terrorism and economic
sabotage.

Despite this, the revolutionary government was still able to redistribute land to 200,000 landless peasants (in a country of 20 million).

But it was the revolution’s establishment of equal rights for women – which included the establishment of compulsory schooling for young girls, and free literacy classes for adult women – that truly raised opposition from the mullahs,
khans and strong Islamic clergy.

The counterrevolution
The reactionary ‘mujahedin’ (or holy warriors – the name that the bands of the khans, mullahs and Islamic clergy
gave themselves) that lead the counterrevolution sought to preserve their positions in society. These position rested upon a backwards system in which women were the private property of men, where local laws only allowed married men access to land and water – with more wives meaning more of those resources, and where a price was literally put on each bride.

In these reactionaries the U.S. capitalist ruling elite saw an ally against the spread of revolution and the overthrow of capitalism internationally and Soviet Union itself, which bordered Afghanistan to the north.

It didn’t take the U.S. imperialists long to began aiding the mujahedin secretly through the CIA, sending them money, guns, bombs, advisors, special agents and the like.

On top of this, the reactionary capitalist governments in Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, along with the fraudulent bureaucrats that controlled China, were also aiding the counterrevolutionaries.

As the armed counterrevolution grew, with literally tons of aid pouring in from the CIA, China, Pakistan, Egypt and
Saudi Arabia, Revolutionary Defense Groups were formed in Afghanistan, with the participation of large numbers of
women who sought to defend the rights they had gained.

At the same time, the revolutionary government requested military assistance from the USSR.

The bureaucratic leadership of the USSR first sent only military advisors before finally being pressured by the reality of imperialist-backed counterrevolution at the gates of the Central Asian Soviet Republics to send in some 100,000 troops.

USSR soldiers in Afghanistan.

While revolutionary Afghanistan’s army and popular militias, with the assistance of soldiers from the USSR, were more or less able to beat back the counterrevolutionaries for ten years, horrendous atrocities were still carried out.

Whenever the reactionaries of the mujahedin were able to get a hold of a soldier from the USSR or a teacher (who committed the “crime” of teaching a women to read), they would frequently cut up, skin or behead them, or some combination thereof. Other times they would drug them and imprison them, so that they could be brutally tortured later.

These savage reactionaries – which included amongst their ranks Osama bin Laden – were the people Democratic U.S.
President Jimmy Carter gave billions of dollars to, and the same scum Republican U.S. President Ronald Reagan hailed as “freedom fighters.”

USSR withdraw
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union.

Under the guise of “democratic reform” and “openness,” Gorbachev and his cohorts sought to settle with the imperialists – who were openly driving for the destruction of the USSR – and allow an increase in capitalist penetration.

On July 20, 1987, the USSR, then beginning to crumble under the weight of internal contradiction and the suicidal policies of its bureaucratic leadership, treacherously announced that it planned to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan.

By 1989 the task was complete, leaving the revolutionary Afghan government to stand on its own against a counterrevolutionary band receiving major backing from several governments.

At the time, there were over a quarter of a million women working, and another 15,000 women serving in the army and militias in Afghanistan. Women made up half of the doctors and university teachers in the country, and more than 500,000 were enrolled in schools and literacy programs. For the first time in the history of Afghanistan, women could walk around in the cities without having to wear a veil.

All of these women were prime targets for the reactionary mujahedin which, emboldened by the withdraw of the Soviets, were now stepping up their attacks.

Afghan Women's militia. Women volunteered for militia duty to defend their newly won rights against counterrevolutionaries.

In response to this serious threat, the PDPA set out to arm and train all of its female members.

More civil war
Despite the withdraw of the USSR, the revolutionary forces of Afghanistan were able to hold their own against the mujahedin reactionaries for some time.

In fact, the Afghan Army, which had been trained by the USSR’s military and by participating in several battles,
actually began to perform better after the USSR’s withdraw.

The militias too did well against the counterrevolutionaries. They were able to successfully defend, for instance, the Afghan city of Jalalabad from the onslaught of mujahedin bands operating out of nearby CIA bases in Pakistan.

But the revolutionary forces, demoralized by the counterrevolutionary destruction of the USSR and under a de facto oil blockade from Russia’s new capitalist government, were increasingly fractured and divided. By 1992 they could no longer hold out.

The counterrevolution succeeds
By April, 1992, the mujahedin entered the capital city of Kabu, and President Mohammad Najibullah was
overthrown.

A “coalition” government was then set up, made up of elements of the mujahedin – which was beginning to split into different factions – some PDPA members, and some army officers.

Over the next four years control of the government would shift back and forth between different factions of the mujahedin, but one thing remained the same throughout: all the progressive measures introduced by the revolution
were steadily being overturned.

In 1996, one particularly reactionary Islamic fundamentalist militia, the Taliban, was able to take control of Kabul, which was devastated by years of war.

President Mohammad Najibullah and his brother hung from a lamp post by Taliban.

One of the first acts the Taliban carried out was the forceful removal of Mohammad Najibullahfrom the UN compound he had been staying in. They then proceeded to publically castrate him before hanging him and his brother from a lamp post in downtown Kabul where they were left for three days.

The aftermath
The rule of the Taliban, which enjoyed the support of the U.S. imperialists that funded it as a part of the mujahedin early on, was notoriously oppressive.

Upon taking power, these reactionary religious extremists threw acid in the faces of women whose faces were uncovered, closed down schools and created groups of young thugs that went around brutally beating any woman who so much as bared her wrist.

Women in Afghanistan today, enslaved and forced to wear full length burqas.

Under their rule, women were forcefully secluded in their homes (where all windows had to be painted black). Women were forced to wear a burqa which covered them from head to toe, and were forbidden to be educated after the age of 8 (and prior to that, they could only learn about the Muslim holy book, the Qu’ran).

In 2001, the U.S. imperialists used the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon as justification to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, which had refused to bow to their demands.

Today, Afghanistan remains a horribly oppressive country, occupied by imperialist forces and headed by a U.S. puppet leader.

No imperialist intervention in Sudan!

This was written up in the run up to the “nationwide and global demonstrations on the weekend of April 28, 2007, directed by the national Save Darfur Coalition”. It raises points that continue to be relevant today.

Large numbers of people around the world, including many Black people in the U.S., are justifiably disturbed by the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan, which has left hundreds of thousands dead and turned many more into refugees.

Their despair has caused many of these well meaning people to line up behind the forces calling for intervention in Darfur, but as we’ll point out, such an intervention can only lead to increased agony for the Sudanese people.

The nature of the conflict
Many of those calling for intervention in Sudan describe the situation there as a “genocide” of Black Africans by Arab Muslims. As horrendous as the situation is the Sudan is, what is occurring there is not genocide. Rather, it is a civil war between groups of Black Muslim nomads backed by the government, and groups of Black Muslim farmers in the South, with both sides carrying out numerous atrocities.

The ‘Save Darfur Coalition’
The list of organizations that originally came together to form the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ – which has called this and other demonstrations – reads like a who’s who of reaction. Christian fundamentalist groups like National Association of Evangelicals and ‘Sudan Sunrise’ (who seek to convert the people of Sudan to their particular religious doctrine) joined together with the pro-Iraqi war, neo-conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Zionist Anti-Defamation League to form this coalition, while groups like the NAACP and Africa Action were originally excluded. In fact, many of the earlier rallies called by the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ did not have a single Sudanese or Muslim speaker!

The reactionaries behind this coalition are now joined by a coalition of prominent liberals, Democratic and Republican politicians, labor organizations, and celebrities like George Clooney and Mia Farrow.

The one thing these organizations and individuals have in common is their call for intervention in Sudan; but this is something even George W. Bush and Tony Blair have gotten behind! Both of these war criminals called for a UN “peacekeeping operation” to back up an already existing African Union (AU) force of 7,000 at the UN General Assembly in late 2006.

So, what is the solution to the conflict in Sudan: the intervention of U.S. forces, a U.S.-led UN peacekeeping force, or a “multinational peacekeeping force” as the organizers of this march have called for? None of the above!

Troops in?
It is beyond absurd to appeal to the same government that left thousands of poor Black people to die in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to save poor Africans in Sudan. The politicians in the U.S. government represent the rich and their drive for infinitely increasing profits. They have absolutely no interest in the well being of the people of Darfur. This is the government of U.S. capitalism – which was built up on the backs of kidnapped African slaves – that we’re talking about!

It’s not just Bush
Some in the U.S. still harbor illusions that the Democrats will bring an end to the Iraq war and create a “peacekeeping force” to be sent to Sudan, but this ignores a fundamental reality: the Democrats serve the interests of the same rich elite as the Republicans, just in a different way.

Indeed, a key criticism of the Bush administration by the Democrats has been that its policies in the Middle East have limited the ability of the U.S. government to invade other countries like Iran!

The last time the U.S. carried out a “humanitarian mission” in Africa was under Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1993. While ostensibly in Somalia to “help out,” U.S. forces massacred over a thousand Somalis who opposed their presence. Not long after, in 1998, Clinton ordered U.S. forces to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan for supposedly “harboring Al-Qaeda terrorists.” The only thing they blew up were several civilians and the only pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.

While it’s true that some 300,000 Sudanese people have lost their lives in this civil war, it’s also the case that over 600,000 are dead as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was backed by both the Democrats and Republicans. Calling for the U.S. imperialists to intervene to stop the civil war in Sudan is like calling on a group of rapists to stop a rape!

Popular pressure?
Even if the rich capitalist elite that rules the U.S. decides to send troops into Sudan, it will not be a result of popular pressure. It took years of constant and intense struggle by people in the U.S. and an unbeatable enemy to force the U.S. rulers to withdraw their forces from Viet Nam. A few small protests will never force them to send their troops in anywhere! No, if the U.S. rulers decide to send troops into Darfur, it will be because they perceive it to be in their interests, and they will do it in a way that they see fit!

And indeed, the U.S. government is already intervening to an extent in Sudan, and has been for some time. It is a documented fact that the U.S. government has funded “rebel” militias in Sudan since the late 70’s, with the aim of overthrowing the Sudanese government, which supports the Palestinian people’s struggle against the Israeli occupation, and has established strong economic ties with China. These “rebel” militias have carried out numerous war crimes, and have often refused to sign any peace treaties. They are no friends of the Sudanese people.

What about the UN and AU?
There are many who place their hopes in a “multinational peacekeeping force” to end the carnage in Darfur, but the reality is that such a force will only deepen the misery of the already suffering Sudanese people. The UN itself is dominated by the U.S. government and the imperialist governments of Britain, Germany and France – which are the very governments that have historically exploited Africa, through colonialism, neo-colonialism, slavery, etc., for their own gains. The current civil war in Sudan itself, like those that have preceded it, was born of divisions between the north and south of the country that British colonizers created in the first place!

The “fig leaf” of the UN is in reality a blood soaked whip. Several murderous campaigns – from Korea to Haiti – have been carried out under what revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara called “the discredited flag of the United Nations.”

Currently, an “international peacekeeping force” is carrying out the bloody occupation of Haiti, where a coup orchestrated by the U.S. government ousted democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. These “peacekeepers” have repeatedly attacked unarmed men, women and children, killing hundreds, and have prevented thousands from reaching the polls in local and national elections.

The last thing the people of Sudan need is a similarly vicious armed force in their country, whether it carries out its occupation under the flag of the UN or the AU, or both!

What can we do?
The key task of those in the United States today is the fight for an immediate end to the decimating occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the prevention of any future attacks on Iran. The best thing those in the U.S. can do for their brothers and sisters in Darfur is to fight against “their own” rulers in Washington. Regime change begins at home!

More Sudanese people are currently dying from easily preventable causes, like disease and hunger, than from bullets. The same system that spawned the civil war in Sudan keeps the people it effects most poor and hungry!

Then there is the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has raged on for years, leaving almost four million dead. This conflict – the bloodiest since World War II – is almost never mentioned in the mainstream capitalist press.

The only lasting solution for the misery and poverty that hundreds of millions of Africans are forced to dwell in lies in revolution – to oust the rich parasites, from Khartoum to Washington, who live off of the exploitation of the toiling masses, and reorganize society to meet human need.

No to imperialist intervention! UN “peacekeepers” out of Haiti! U.S./UN/AU hands off Sudan!