Actualité > Message of the OCML Proletarian Way on the occasion of the tour of the (...)
Message of the OCML Proletarian Way on the occasion of the tour of the comrade of RAWA
Message read in the meetings of the tour
Good afternoon to all of you,
We would like to thank our sister and comrade from RAWA for being with us here today. Thank you for your testimony and for the determination and courage of your comrades despite the immense difficulties they are facing from the Taliban and ISIS fundamentalists. It is a lesson for us here in an imperialist metropolis, where militant commitment has fallen out of favour.
As activists of OCML Voie Prolétarienne we have been involved in supporting RAWA for twenty years. We first welcomed Sahar Saba in 2002, then Zoya in 2009 and now again today with Mariam and we also translate and distribute their texts, striving to make their struggle more widely known known. Each occasion has been of key important in providing us with the opportunity to popularise the struggle in our neighbourhoods, factories and universities, thereby carrying out politics in and with the masses as they themselves do.
The struggle of our RAWA comrades is an example for us all. For forty-five years since 1977 they have been fighting imperialism and its interventions, beginning with Russian imperialism and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Indeed, Meena, the founder of RAWA was herself assassinated by agents of the Afghan secret services backed by the USSR in 1987.
It should be borne in mind that it this foreign intervention that gave rise to the nationalist resistance by the fundamentalist feudal warlords and later to the creation of the Taliban, which was immediately distorted by the massive support of the USA vying for competition in the world imperialist stage. It is imperialism that feeds fundamentalism.
RAWA opposed the Russian imperialists before going on to combat the Taliban and all the reactionary fundamentalist feudal warlords, including those who enjoy the backing of the West, including Commander Massoud, a collaborator of the French secret services responsible for reintroducing Sharia law in Kabul. RAWA then went on to oppose the US and Western intervention head on, not forgetting the French intervention between 2001 and 2014, from presidents Chirac and Sarkozy though to Hollande, with 89 French soldiers killed there.
Today, despite US imperialism having officially withdrawn, covert interference continues unabated via secret services and special forces on the ground. Not to mention the Chinese, the Turks, the Pakistanis, the Iranians, all serving some cause or another. But we know that imperialism and foreign intervention, be it by a large or small power, is ALWAYS to the detriment of the people.
RAWA places no trust in any foreign powers, either regional or global, that claim to help them. They know that they can only rely on their own strength, in line with the old Maoist maxim of the Chinese revolution. They know that they can only count on the international solidarity that we bring them today.
RAWA is a feminist organisation rallying women on a radical, secular (not in an anti-religious sense, but rather the separation of religion and politics), anti‐fundamentalist, revolutionary and anti‐imperialist basis for a free, secular and democratic Afghanistan, rid of fundamentalism, foreign influences and interventions.
RAWA is an organisation based in Afghanistan itself which rather than fleeing into exile, carries out underground humanitarian aid involving food and health assistance for refugees, schooling for women and girls together with political work, fighting for democracy and combatting imperialism.
At a time when Iranian women are rising up against the power of the mullahs, our comrades and sisters from RAWA remind us that only a solid, well organised, steadfast and underground organisation can ensure the survival and the hope of a revolutionary movement in the long term. Another lesson for us to think about in our imperialist countries !
As activists of the OCML Voie Prolétarienne, we have provided political support to RAWA for twenty years. Their struggle is our struggle : feminist, anti‐imperialist, secularist and revolutionary, we share their struggle. We are proud to have them on our side and we learn from their struggle every day.
