Introduction
In Afghanistan’s modern history, the concept of “national oppression” has remained one of the most contentious yet neglected political and intellectual issues. In its simplest definition, national oppression refers to the structural discrimination and inequality of power, opportunity, and social status among the ethnic groups of a nation, a condition in which one group, defined by ethnicity, language, or culture, historically dominates the political, economic, and cultural structure, pushing others to the margins. In Afghanistan, this inequality has not only been embedded in political power but also institutionalized within administrative systems, education, and even the collective memory of society. The reproduction of ethnic privilege has often been justified under the guise of concepts such as “national unity” or “the supreme interests of the country.” Yet whenever the issue of interethnic inequality has been raised, the dominant political and intellectual response has typically been silence or accusations of “ethnic chauvinism.”
National oppression, in fact, represents a form of class oppression refracted through the lens of ethnicity. When economic, educational, and administrative opportunities are unequally distributed among ethnic groups, it is the lower classes within marginalized communities that suffer the most. Thus, ethnic and class discrimination operate simultaneously, reproducing inequality on two levels through wealth and power on one hand, and through identity and ethnic belonging on the other. It was within this social and political context that Taher Badakhshi, one of Afghanistan’s most prominent leftist figures, courageously articulated the concept of national oppression and sought to reveal its inseparable connection with class exploitation. Yet this effort was met not with understanding or solidarity from the majority of leftists, but with hostility and rejection. This essay focuses specifically on the Maoist faction of the Afghan Left, leaving the critique of other leftist currents for another time.
Why Did Afghanistan’s Maoists Fail to Grasp the Concept of National Oppression?
Throughout the history of Afghanistan’s leftist movement, no concept has provoked as much controversy as national oppression. First introduced and elaborated upon by Taher Badakhshi, it drew a sharp line between two divergent visions of social justice within the Afghan Left: on one side, the doctrinaire Marxists, who viewed justice exclusively through the lens of class struggle; and on the other, Badakhshi and his followers, who insisted on the inextricable link between class and national oppression. For the Maoists, any discussion of ethnic or national issues was seen as a deviation from Marxism. They believed that emphasizing national oppression distracted workers and peasants from their true enemy, capitalism and imperialism. From their perspective, once the revolution triumphed, all forms of oppression, including ethnic inequality, would naturally disappear. However, the history of Afghanistan proved that such a view was not scientific but profoundly simplistic.
Unlike his contemporaries, Badakhshi sought to interpret Afghanistan’s complex social realities through a localized lens of Marxism. He clearly saw that political, administrative, and military power in Afghanistan had historically been concentrated in the hands of one ethnic group. In such a society, class oppression could not be meaningfully separated from national oppression. Class and ethnicity were intertwined, and economic as well as political deprivation had assumed an ethnic dimension. Hence, Badakhshi argued that social justice without national justice was impossible. Yet, rather than engaging him in theoretical debate, the Maoists chose denial and hostility. They accused him of “nationalist deviation” and deemed his ideas a threat to the unity of the left. Their reaction stemmed less from intellectual disagreement than from a fundamental inability to comprehend Afghanistan’s realities. The Marxism promoted in the country was, for the most part, a crude translation of foreign theories detached from the nation’s social context.
Despite pressure and danger, Badakhshi refused to retreat. He believed that no revolution in Afghanistan could achieve genuine justice without first addressing the roots of national oppression. His question was disarmingly simple: How can one speak of the unity of workers and peasants when a Tajik, Hazara, or Uzbek peasant lives in political and economic marginalization while a Pashtun peasant benefits from the historic privileges of the power structure? The Maoists’ response was silence or erasure. Instead of reconsidering their assumptions, they branded Badakhshi an enemy of the working class. Yet history has vindicated him. Decades after his death, national oppression remains a living reality, and ethnic divisions continue to cast a long shadow over Afghanistan’s politics and power structures.
Badakhshi’s ideas were, at their core, an effort to reconcile two dimensions of struggle: the class struggle and the national struggle. He demonstrated that Marxism, if unable to engage with the lived realities of its own society, degenerates into a lifeless and ineffective ideology. For that reason, his thought was not a deviation from Marxism, but rather a living and creative reinterpretation of it within the Afghan context. The Maoist left, however, remained trapped within rigid dogmatism. They were more loyal to slogans than to reality. As a result, they not only failed to defend the working class but also, in practice, contributed to the reproduction of the same ethnic power structures they claimed to oppose.
Now, as history looks back from a distance at that era, it is clear that the Maoist left’s hostility toward Taher Badakhshi reflected a deeper theoretical and moral crisis within the Afghan left. They refused to acknowledge that justice, when understood solely in class terms and detached from national justice, easily becomes a tool to justify new forms of oppression. Today, revisiting Badakhshi’s thought is not an act of historical sympathy but a necessary step toward understanding the roots of the Afghan left’s failure to achieve social justice. Our country remains ensnared in the same cycle of ethnic discrimination and centralized power. Without the honest recognition and resolution of the question of national oppression, no discussion of justice, freedom, or equality can have genuine meaning. Decades ago, Taher Badakhshi warned that if national justice were not achieved, the class struggle itself would go astray. That warning remains as relevant today as ever.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
