From: "Neil (practical history)" <practicalhistory-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Afghanistan 1968 (and Sudan)
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 21:04:36 +0000


I’ve found the original source for my query on Afghanistan: “Between April 
and June 1968 there were at least twenty strikes for better pay and 
conditions in industrial centres around the country, some of which turned 
violent”. Students also staged strikes and protests and there was an active 
women’s movement.  (George Arney, Afghanistan, Mandarin, 1990).

I would still like to know more about this. Funny how there’s so much 
available on Europe and the US in 1968 and so little on the (considerable) 
class struggle elsewhere. Does anybody know of any good sources (preferably 
on the internet) on class struggles elsewhere in ‘Islamic’ countries and/or  
the role of  ‘Western’ states in promoting fundamentalist reaction? I’ve got 
some stuff on Iraq at www.geocities.com/pract_history/gulf.html

Another example of the US and Britain supporting Islamic reaction against 
the working class is the Sudan.

In the Sudan, a powerful working class developed after the Second World War, 
with high points including widespread strikes from 1946-53, mass 
demonstrations against the resettlement of people to make way for a dam in 
in the early 1960s, and a big railway strike in 1961. The Muslim Brothers 
played a key role in countering this movement, by, for instance, 
successfully pushing for the constitution to be amended to outlaw communism 
in 1965. The Muslim Brothers also helped the government of President Nimeiri 
(1969-1985) to hold onto power and impose austerity measures on behalf of 
the International Monetary Fund during the 1970s and early 80s. During a 
state of emergency declared in 1984, prompted by strikes and riots, the 
Muslim Brothers imposed a reign of terror, with ‘courts of decisive justice’ 
handing out floggings, amputations and executions (A history of the Sudan, 
P.M. Holt & M.W. Daly, Longman, London, 1988). The regime collapsed amidst a 
general strike, anti-IMF riots and the mass storming of the notorious Kober 
prison.

Needless to say Nimeiri regime was consistently backed by the US as an  ally 
in the  effort to destabilise the pro-Soviet Ethiopian government, as well 
as for its vicious policing of the local working class on behalf of global 
capital.

It was the Nimeiri regime which stirred up religious conflicts by 
introducing Islamic Law throughout the country and abolishing autonomy for 
the predominately Christian South.  But the ethnic, regional and religious 
divisions underlying the civil war in Sudan were deliberately created by the 
British Empire. For instance, the British banned Christian missionaries in 
the north of Sudan to placate its moderate Islamic allies there while it 
actively encouraged them in the south. The Passports and Permits Ordinance 
(1922) went further and classified the south as ‘closed districts’, imposing 
restrictions on movement between north and south Sudan.

Neil

Practical History: www.geocities.com/pract_history




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