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A history of Afghanistan from the 70s to date. (

NB: the Americans started funding Islamists BEFORE the Soviet invasion. Here it is, from the horse's mouth - along with a chillingly casual dismissal from Brzezinski of the threat created, three years before 9/11 dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview)

lyrics

As Afghan musicians are silenced and beaten
And women flogged into submission and veil
As gay men are tortured by gun toting fascists
I’m taking you back to the old hippy trail
That was the Afghanistan of the Seventies
Left wing ideas were being spread fast
By young angry students and workers in cities
Opposed by a countryside stuck in the past
The radical hippies of Europe were visiting
Marx, feminism and land rights in tow
And urban Afghanistan made revolution
But rural Afghanistan rose and said no
Young radical teachers went into the countryside
Ordering mullahs to let the girls learn
They had their throats cut, acid thrown in their faces -
Their comrades attacked elders’ homes in return.

The civil war became increasingly brutal
The communists, split, looked to Russia for aid
Brzezinski and Carter saw an opportunity
Funds were established and contacts were made
They financed the torture and murder of teachers
Denial of learning and burning of schools
The thugs who’d one day be behind 9/11
Were funded and trained as America’s tools
Their aim was to force Soviet intervention
Get Russia involved in its own Vietnam
The fact that these ‘allies’ all hated the U.S.
Was simply ignored in this cynical plan
Most Afghan communists welcomed the Russians
Which cost them support in a proud sovereign nation
And our media called Islamist terrorists ‘heroes’
‘Brave fighters opposing a Red occupation’

There followed ten years of unspeakable stalemate
The US and Russia both sharing the blame
Then Gorbachev oversaw Soviet withdrawal
But warlords still fought till the Taliban came
The peace that they brought was the still of oblivion
For women, for thinkers, for music, for life
Then came 9/11 and US invasion
A new occupier, the same brutal strife

The irony was that this time the Americans
Built schools for girls, didn’t finance destruction
And life in the cities got better for many
With hopes of renewal, rebirth, reconstruction
But the countryside remained a hive of reaction
The Taliban fled but they quickly returned
Again they spread hatred disguised as religion
Once more teachers tortured, once more schools were burned
And now the Americans flee like the Russians
And Taliban thugs commit hideous crimes
I can’t help but wonder just what would have happened
If the Yanks hadn’t financed them in former times
Imagine how different our world would be now
If the secular socialist teachers had won
And the founders of Taliban and Al Qaeda
Had been vanquished before they had even begun.

credits

from Afghanistan EP, track released November 4, 2021
Riddijm by Kingsley Salmon and What's Left Dub

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Attila the Stockbroker Southwick, UK

Attila the Stockbroker. 40 years of hard hitting social surrealist spoken word and punk rock tinged with early music. 8 books of poetry, autobiography, 40 CDs/LPs, 3500 gigs in 24 countries...a long life earning his living doing what he loves. 'Heart on my Sleeve', a 40th anniversary LP is just out, and his Collected Works will be published by Cherry Red Books later this year. ... more

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