THE DEATHS of two Australian soldiers, dozens of Afghanis in in suicide bombings and the crisis in Pakistan have suddenly focused attention on Afghanistan in the last few weeks. The Taliban is back, taking on the NATO forces there to support the Karzai government that replaced it after the US-led invasion in 2001.

NATO's presence is fuelling its resistance and bringing untold suffering to the people of Afghanistan.

Many Afghanis initially welcomed the Karzai government. But it has failed to deliver. NGOs have not provided the promised houses, schools, health clinics or even basics like electricity and water.

The small amounts of aid money have been pocketed by contractors and government officials. Now the war has destroyed what was left of the country's poor economy.

Farmers, unable to support themselves with traditional crops, have turned to growing the opium poppy, increasing production by 34 per cent in this year alone.

The US has employed the American mercenaries, DynCorp, to try and eradicate opium growing. DynCorp became notorious in Latin America for using toxic chemicals and brute force to carry out their contracts.

In Afghanistan destroying the drug crops has left people destitute so they have looked for help to protect their livelihoods. While the Taliban suppressed poppy growing when they were in power, they now use it to fund weapons for resisting the American occupation-and they inherited it from the Pakistani secret service (ISI) and the CIA.

The Taliban are the second-generation product of CIA collaboration with the Saudis to fund an Islamist resistance to the Russian occupation in the 1980s. The Taliban (which means, "students") who conquered Kabul in 1996 were mostly young men who grew up in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan.

They adopted the Islam of the Saudis known as Wahhabism, a reactionary utopian version of Islam-not that the US cared at the time. After the Russians were forced out in 1989, the leaders of the anti-Russian alliance fought a devastating civil war that all but destroyed the cities of Afghanistan.

The Taliban succeeded because they opened roads, disarmed the warring militias and imposed a brutal order. They also welcomed Osama bin Laden as an honoured guest, making them the target of American vengeance after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

The Taliban has led calls for resistance to the American occupation. So many among the Afghani poor support the Taliban. Many young men have joined them, not because they adhere to its Wahhabist ideology, but because they see it as the only way to defend their livelihoods.

The Taliban is using classic guerrilla warfare tactics. NATO's heavy artillery and air raids cannot defeat this in the long-term-but it can, and has, killed thousands of civilians to the point that President Karzai has publicly rebuked NATO.

NATO's 25,000-strong force, including Australia's contingent, is too weak to occupy a country as diverse, rugged and war-damaged as Afghanistan, let alone contest a guerrilla war. And the more that civilian deaths rise, the more support for the Taliban grows.

The British have appealed for more troops. But as more NATO soldiers die, it is more likely that the Dutch and Italian troops will withdraw.

Special operations

This is the maelstrom into which Australian troops have been sent. They are located in the central province of Oruzgan which has a Pashtun majority related to the Kandahar Pashtuns.

The Australian soldiers are SAS-special operations forces-and play an offensive role. They don't do "guard duty", as Howard implies. If they continue with forward scouting operations, we should expect more fire-fights and more Australian deaths.

The chaos has now spread into neighbouring Pakistan. The Afghani-Pakistan border imposed by the British empire artificially divides the Pashtun people.

Significantly, the Pashtuns who live in Pakistan's impoverished North-Western Frontier region support the Taliban more as fellow Pashtuns who are fighting the Americans than as fellow Muslims.

Imperialist intervention in Afghanistan-from the nineteenth century, when Britain and Russia faced each other, until today-has destabilised the country, keeping it poor and backward.

It is often claimed that the country is now so under-developed that some kind of foreign intervention is necessary in order to protect minorities and women. But not only does this argument ignore the fact that this situation is the consequence of 30 years of interference by Russia, the CIA and the American military-it also fails to see that the solution to the poor and disposed lies in a region-wide uprising against imperialism.

The most powerful force for change in the region lies across the border in the cities of Pakistan. Pakistan has a large working class capable of challenging imperialism in the region and western-backed dictators like Musharraf.

The current revolt could turn out to be crucial. A revolution in Pakistan could liberate the peoples of the North-West Frontier from their plight to a degree the west would never accept-and it could spill across the border, offering Afghanis a glimpse of their own freedom.

By Anne Picot

Further reading: Jonathon Neale on "The long torment of Afghanistan", International Socialism journal.