[BRIEF NOTE] Julie Burchill Thoughts

[rfmcdonald]

The first Julie Burchill article that I ever read completely was "Out of the rubble", a piece published in The Guardian less than a month after September 11th.

Nevertheless, it remains a fact that, even as a twentysomething flibbertigibbet, I was the only British journalist I know of to back the Soviets in Afghanistan, and to beg, to plead with the west to back the forces of civilisation against the forces of barbarism, so that we could stop the Islamofascists in their tracks as surely as the democracies could have stopped the forces of fascism proper in Spain if only they hadn't looked the other way. But worse than that, we were arming these maniacs up to the hilt!

Basically, at the time, I was treated as some sort of plague-carrying loony; I remember the super-smug Ken Follett on Radio 4 eulogising the forefathers of the Taliban and saying how he chose them as the heroes of his latest potboiler because there was a consensus that they were the good guys; when my opposition was mentioned, you could hear the contempt drip off his voice as he said, "Well, I don't think anyone pays any attention to what she thinks." I've often had cause to wonder wryly since then whether that sexy feminist wife of his has kept him up to speed with what his heroes have done to innocent young women and girls in the name of their peculiar religion, and whether he has the grace to shudder when he sees that novel on the bookshop shelves. Probably not.

For ten minutes after I read this article, I was awestruck. Burchill had managed, in the space of a few paragraphs, to challenge the entire previous generation of Western foreign policy towards Afghanistan. Why did the United States and the rest of the non-Soviet bloc world want Afghanistan to fall under the sway under reactionary local tyrants when a moderately more human alternative was already installed, in the form of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan? Yes, there was the invasion, but what of that? After all, the Vietnamese had chased the Khmer Rouge out of Cambodia and gotten chastised for it, yet no one seriously suggested that Pol Pot's lot be allowed back in to reopen the killing fields. It was only when I reached the eleven-minute mark that I remembered that the Soviet war in Afghanistan used tactics bordering upon the genocidal.

Generally, the lavish use of Soviet firepower masked the relatively modest results of most operations. Although the Soviets repeatedly demonstrated their ability to obliterate villages and drive the resistance into remote recesses of the countryside, they never had any intention of occupying areas where logistical support was nearly impossible to obtain and the inhabitants had largely fled. Indeed, the exodus of the population from many areas subjected to ground and air attacks led one scholar to describe Soviet strategy as "migratory genocide." Although estimates of the migration varied, up to five million Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan or Iran.

In practical terms, the typical Soviet offensive, though spectacular in its immediate effect, was counterproductive. On the one hand, the Mujahideen often suffered many casualties, and the populace could hardly fail to be impressed by the might of the invader. On the other hand, these operations primed the pump of the Mujahideen replacement pool. For example, a general Soviet disregard for civilian casualties, not to mention the destruction of villages, prompted the displacement of many Afghans to refugee camps outside Afghanistan. There, Mujahideen recruiters and trainers harnessed the refugees’ anger and incorporated them into the growing war effort.

Thus, the availability of sanctuaries to the resistance was not merely helpful, it was indispensable. Due to the fragile nature of the agricultural economy in many rural areas, villages were vulnerable targets for Soviet air power. Subsistence was entirely dependent on scarce water sources. As one knowledgeable observer put it, "Let one canal break or simply be poorly maintained, and a village dies." In other words, even if Soviet military might could not directly strike at small resistance bands away from the capital, it could render their sustainment difficult, if not impossible, by systematically depopulating whole areas. If the traditional formula for victory against guerrillas is to "drain the water" so as to defeat "the fish," the Soviets might well have succeeded in Afghanistan had they been able to envelop the country and seal the borders.

I suppose that this shows that self-styled progressives should actually look behind the shiny façades of objectively progressive regimes. Whether or not this leads to conclusions of broader relevance--to Burchill, to progressives--is another matter entirely.

I've a copy of Sugar Rush. I've been meaning to read it.