The following article is excerpted from a presentation delivered by African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) President Yejide Orunmila during a September 7, 2021 live forum broadcast on The Burning Spear TV channel on YouTube.
As a colonized African woman, I recognize the significance of Afghan women struggling for independence within the context of fighting against U.S. imperialism.
The bourgeois media has been saying how they’re so concerned about Afghan women and human rights violations, but we should be clear that the United States did not go into Afghanistan to protect Afghan women.
The U.S. and other foreign powers’ interest in Afghanistan is for resources and labor. It’s always about occupying for those minerals that a particular country holds and its position in that area.
We know that purporting to hold up the rights of Afghan women and to make sure that there’s democracy in the land is nothing but malarkey. It has no basis in the reality of the Afghan people and their struggle to defeat U.S. occupation.
Colonialism is not there to support self-determination. Colonialism is there to benefit the colonizer, to exploit the people and to get out of them what it needs.
It traps the people that it is colonizing in this cycle that only revolves around the needs of the colonizer. Therefore, any progress that would have been intrinsic in that society stops automatically because now they are serving the interests of the U.S. colonizer.
The U.S. did not bring justice and democracy. It was already there in Afghanistan. People had been on that trajectory until the U.S. intervened.
Afghan women have a long history of engagement in political life. PHOTO: “TARAKI AFGHAN WOMEN AFGHANISTAN PDPA RED ARMY COMMUNISM RED FLAG KHALQ” BY ROSALUXEMBURG IS LICENSED WITH CC BY-ND 2.0. VIEW A COPY OF THIS LICENSE.
The U.S. caused the conflict which resulted in a hyper Islamic state that the U.S. armed and trained for the purpose of defeating Russia.
This has caused the country to continue to be in a cycle of colonialism and neocolonialism. Right now people are “concerned” about the conditions of women, but obviously the U.S. was not concerned about the conditions of women when it was drop.ping bombs on neighbor.hoods, killing entire families, and shooting down women and children in the streets.
The conditions of women and children and these human rights violations were of no concern to the U.S. They claim to be concerned about all these things now that they have been defeated by the Afghan people.
The people who have been fighting the colonial advances of the United States and other foreign powers in that area have had to wage a serious and bloody war. That includes Afghan women who had no desire to be oppressed and exploited by a foreign entity like the U.S. and no desire to be oppressed at all.
So the developments that had been in place and happening between 1965 and 1990 with Afghan women’s groups in Afghanistan can continue to be pushed forward because now the people have more power over their lives in the country.
So as revolutionary Af.rican women who are opposed to colonialism, we say victory to Afghanistan, and victory to Afghan people!
Victory to Afghan women who are now able to push forward the developments that need to happen to free themselves from any type of oppression that holds them in a place of regression!
Afghan women in the 1970s had full rights. The United States government likes to say that Afghanistan was a puppet of Russia, but the reality is that the Afghan communists were actually in power longer than the USSR.
They were for the question of forwarding equality, socialism and justice within the land. They held that strong until the U.S. intervened, inciting nationalists, exciting the opposition to the Russians, and hence.forth creating the war that we currently see.
In that construct, there was an organization of Afghan women who were anti-imperialist, who were in the streets fighting against any injustices that were happening to Afghan women. They were moving forward policies that were broadening society and including Afghan women into society in a positive way.
Women became involved in politics as well, and all of that was undone by the U.S. intervention in the country. The U.S claims to be this bastion of freedom, yet its strongest allies in that region have been severely oppressive towards their women.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are the top three places in the world where women have no rights and require male guardianship to do anything in society, but there is no propaganda around those countries. That’s because they’re being funded or armed by the United States, and the U.S. is getting something from them in terms of security of its interests in that region.
I also want to say that the U.S.’s European allies, like the U.S., are not saying any.thing about the oppression of Muslim people. In France, there are these highly oppressive laws that ban the way that Muslim women dress traditionally. There’s no mention of the human rights violations that are taking place.
Right here in the United States, in the state of Texas, a state law has been passed that basically says that if a woman decides that she wants to have an abortion, she will be penalized with jail time.
So, if the U.S. is concerned about human and women’s rights violations, they can honestly pick out the things that they have been involved in.
The African National Women’s Organization stands in complete unity with Afghan women and their struggle to be free of all oppression, and we stand in complete solidarity with the Afghan people against the onslaught of U.S. imperialism and any other type of occupation that would rob them of self-determination.
We are really excited about the future of Afghanistan and of the Afghan people and are really looking for.ward to the developments of Afghan women when they are left to their own devices—their own ways to deal with the contradictions within that society.
So we must resist, as colonized women, any propaganda that says that U.S. imperialism and occupation should continue to happen on our watch. We have to arm ourselves to recognize when those tactics are being used by the bourgeois media and by the ruling class.
The U.S. is not there for Afghan women and their freedom just like it’s not here for African people and African women. The United States is always elsewhere in the world to rob the people of self-determination and resources for its own selfish interests.
Until we destroy imperialism, we’re going to continue to see these tactics by the U.S. and its allies.
