Statement of Maoists of Afghanistan: “Forward towards Initiating and Carrying Forward the People’s Revolutionary War of National Resistance!”

[Afghan Maoists’ analysis of the killing of Osama bin Laden, and what has changed.– Frontlines ed.]

Statement of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistanon Osama bin Laden’s death:  Forward towards Initiating and Carrying Forward the People’s Revolutionary War of National Resistance!

The actual pretext for America and its allies’ imperialist military onslaught to invade and occupy Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 was to kill or arrest Osama bin Laden, who was suspected as the real mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. During the past ten years of the war of aggression, and the presence of the occupying forces in Afghanistan that have continued under this pretext or others, tens of thousands of people have lost their lives and thousands of the poor huts of the wretched villagers have been destroyed.
But finally it became clear that bin Laden was not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan, close to this country’s capital, Islamabad, and beside the country’s biggest military training center––a training center for a military that is a vassal of the American imperialists and their allies. Apparently, a small group of 14 American special forces with three helicopters–and definitely with the close cooperation of the Pakistani armed forces–attacked bin Laden’s residence on the early morning of May 1, 2011 and killed him, along with one of his sons, and some of his close associates after a limited fire-fight. Immediately after this assault, Barack Obama announced the “American victory” with tympani and cockalorum.
American imperialists and their allies consider bin Laden’s death a big victory for themselves. Now they show off their power even more than before, pretending that no force can resist them. If we look at this claim from a short term tactical perspective then there is no doubt that it possesses some truth. They have eliminated one of America’s current “dangerous enemies” and so cannot avoid boasting about this victory. If we take a deeper look at this issue, however, the imperialists’ strategic weakness and fault can clearly be seen within their current tactical triumph.
First, it should be said that bin Laden was the product of their work: he was trained, organized and armed by them. His benefactors should have been able to easily eliminate such a rebellious one-time agent, just as the Soviet social-imperialists were easily able to eliminate Hafizullah Amin. Spending hundreds billions of dollars and enduring thousands of casualties in a prolonged effort, that stretched over a decade, just to kill a rebellious ex-agent cannot be a sign of strategic strength and power.

Maoists in India: “US imperialism and not Al Qaeda is the gravest global threat not only to the entire oppressed nations and people of the world but also to the US citizens!”

[Revolutionary Maoists in India have released an important statement which declares that the crimes of US imperialism against the people of the world–including against the people of the US–overshadows everything that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda has done.  We urge all people–oppressed peoples, workers, radical democrats, anti-imperialists, revolutionaries and communists, to study this statement. — Frontlines ed.]

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COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MAOIST)

CENTRAL COMMITTEE Press Release
4 May, 2011
War-monger, butcher and blood-thirsty Obama and not Osama
is the No.1 global terrorist threatening world peace!
US imperialism and not Al Qaeda is the gravest global threat
not only to the entire oppressed nations and people of the world
but also to the US citizens!
Condemn the brutal murder of Osama Bin Laden
in a covert operation by the global gendarme CIA!

On May 2, the US imperialists murdered Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda by attacking with helicopters the building where he was staying in Abbottabad in Pakistan. US overstepped the sovereignty of Pakistan by directly conducting this operation without even informing the Pakistan government about it. They jammed the radars of Pakistan, entered its skies with four helicopters and attacked the building and finished the operation ‘with surgical precision’. One woman and two men in the building were also killed and it is said that Osama’s wife was also injured in the attack. Their child seems to have escaped death only by chance in this forty minute operation. The Obama administration was callous beyond words even towards the dead body of Osama. They did not hand over the body to his family members but threw it into the Arabian Sea! This was done to rub salt into the wounds as they very well know how insulting and outraging it would be to the muslims all over the world.

Al Jazeera: Robert Fisk discusses Bin Laden Death

[The eruption of popular revolts across in the Arab world in recent months not only threw the imperialist alignments and arrangements with reactionary regimes into serious crisis and into frenetic scrambles to reassert reactionary power.  But the revolts also threw “traditional” opposition parties and movements (both secular and religious) into question as well.  And in this interview, Robert Fisk (Middle East correspondent of UK’s The Independent) recounts that these movements also politically defeated groups like al Qaeda off the map, as they proved irrelevant–and opposed–to the people’s revolutionary and democratic aspirations. — Frontlines ed.] 

AlJazeeraEnglish on May 2, 2011

Robert Fisk, British author and journalist for the Independent, speaks on al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s death during a US raid on his mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Fisk has interviewed Bin Laden three times in person.

Two “Reigns of Terror” — on Osama bin Laden

[A few hours ago US President Obama announced the triumphant execution of Osama bin Laden, who began his career as a creature of the US opposing the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and who later became the iconic malevolent terrorist of 9/11 and the imperialist’s effective motivating anti-Christ invoked to stampede support for xenophobic and imperialist war moves over the last decade.  Imperialism will miss him; as a stock excuse for imperialist war against people who never had anything to do with al Qaeda or bin Laden, he has been of great use.  The US has waged its “War of Terror” on the people in the name of the “War on Terror.”  But revolutionary people will not miss him in the least.  The absence of his disorienting and murderous al Qaeda, and of the stock media deceptions to paint revolutionaries with a “terrorist” or “al Qaeda” brush, will clear the air for the struggle against imperialism.  Osama bin Laden did not distinguish between the people of the US and the US government, and he projected not a revolutionary class struggle or a revolutionary struggle against all oppression, but a flip-side of the imperialist’s “clash of civilizations.”  This is the key to recognizing his, and al Qaeda’s,  counter-revolutionary and murderous nature.  Too many revolutionaries have been silenced or distorted or shoved into the shadow of bin Laden by Goebbels-like media.  It is time for revolutionaries to speak out, and clearly.  In this

Prominent author, Mark Twain was a leader of the American Anti-Imperialist League

spirit we remember, and print below, a timely passage from Mark Twain on “two Reigns of Terror,” in which his words, directed at the French revolution, have resonance today in considering “Osama bin Laden’s terrorism” vs. “US imperialism’s terrorism.”   — Frontlines ed.]

from A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT (published 1889)
by MARK TWAIN (Samuel L. Clemens)

“There were two ‘Reigns of Terror,’ if we would but remember it
and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other
in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had
lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand
persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are
all for the ‘horrors’ of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror,
so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe,
compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror–that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

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