Score one for the anti-imperialist opposition in Afghanistan—a two star general

Tuesday’s attack on a 2 star general was the highest ranking kills by a member of the Afghani security forces, who turn on the Empire. There have been a number of Afghan attacks on American troops, but this is the highest ranking casualty to date. This is a real high score for the anti-imperialist opposition.

According to an AP report:

Attacks by Afghan forces on their coalition partners _ the Long Wars Journal has counted 87 since 2008 _ reached a peak in 2012. That’s when the U.S. military imposed security and education measures intended to protect coalition troops from the very people they are supposed to help. Until Tuesday’s attack, those measures were thought to have been successful; it had been six months since a uniformed Afghan had attacked American soldiers.

But Tuesday’s attack raised questions about whether the respite was because of the increased security measures or whether it was just the benefit of the drop in U.S. interactions with Afghan soldiers occasioned by the draw-down of American troops. The answer may be important to the safety of the small number of men and women the United States plans to leave in Afghanistan for two more years after combat troops leave at the end of 2014.

Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, 55, was surveying a water treatment facility at the Marshal Fahim National Defense University outside Kabul, when he was shot by a two-year Afghan army vet known as Rafiqullah.

The irony here is that the US counter insurgency programs regularly aim at capturing or killing the leaders of paramilitary opposition groups to the US Empire. A good example is the capture of Comrade Gonzalo (Abimael Guzmán), leader of the Communist Party of Peru (Shining Path) in 1992.

This seemed as if this were the imperialists’ “taste of their own medicine.” President Barack Obama regularly tries to kill al Qaeda officials at the top. It would take a long time and a lot of assassinations to hit enough US leaders to affect foreign policy—still it is a symbolic victory for those Afghanis that actively oppose US imperialism in their country.

- សតិវ​ អតុ