Afghanistan: A country exploited...

By Amrita Selvaraj (Year 12)

For many decades, Afghanistan has been almost exclusively known internationally on account of its involvement in war after war, and its political instability: most recently, on account of the country’s government collapsing and being taken over by the military group, the Taliban. However, what is largely forgotten - or ignored - is the origins of this instability, which is rooted in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

From 1926, Afghanistan had been ruled by a monarchy, and in the 1960s, was ruled by King Mohammed Zahir Shah. However, on July 17th, 1973, Shah was overthrown by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan in a bloodless coup, who declared the country a republic, and himself the President. Whilst in power, Khan attempted to perform several modernisation programs for the country - including a harsh land reform policy - which was widely rejected by the rural population, who saw the reforms as incompatible with traditional Afghan (which were largely Islamic-based) values. Furthermore, his administration was marked by an increasingly violent suppression of anyone who criticised his policies - particularly the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, or PDPA. Thus, dissatisfaction was almost universal amongst Afghanistan’s population, which led to what became known as the Saur Revolution, in which insurgent troops led by the PDPA overthrew Khan’s government. The PDPA declared the country a communist state, known as the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), and was led by Nur Muhammed Taraki.

From its inception, the DRA was unstable. Taraki attempted to establish more progressive reforms - including women’s rights to education, and a more secular state - but once again, this was met with anger from the rural population. Counterproductive agrarian reforms only further incensed the rural people. Arguably the most universal factor for the government’s unpopularity was the atheist component to communism - almost of the country’s population were devout Muslim, with Islam perhaps the only commonality between the Afghan people, who were largely split between different tribes, different social statuses, and even different ethnicities. However, much like his predecessor Khan, Taraki’s government was hugely aggressive towards dissenters, resulting in massacres of villlagers, mass jailings, and mass executions. Estimates for the number executed at the Pul-e-Charkhi prison (a prison in Kabul, the country’s capital) between April 1978 and December 1979 is as high as 27,000. As a result, anti-communist insurgencies began rising amongst both tribal and urban groups, who collectively became known as the mujahideen (Arabic mujāhidūn, “those who engage in jihad [holy war]”).

Across the country, rebellions ensued. In an attempt to regain control, Taraki’s government asked for aid from the Soviet Union - who bordered Afghanistan to the north, and who they had formed close ties with. However, on September 14th, 1979, Hafizullah Amin - the deputy prime minister and fellow member of the PDPA at the time - overthrew Taraki (who was later killed) and seized control of the government. This only worsened the revolt against communist rule. The mujahideen declared a jihad on Amin - who was far more radical in policies than his predecessors - and his supporters. Communist rule became increasingly unstable.

Reasons behind the Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan varied, but of course, centrally focussed on protecting communist rule - and thereby Soviet influenceAfghanistan. Firstly, the political chaos in Afghanistan increased the odds that the Afghan leaders might turn to the US for help, undermining communist influence, and Soviet power. It was even alleged by the USSR that Amin was an agent of the CIA - once again, American influence could not be permitted, especially on the USSR’s own southern border. The Brezhnev Doctrine (1968) also largely justified the need for invasion to the USSR’s leaders. The doctrine was a Soviet foreign policy, which proclaimed that any threat to socialist rule in the Soviet bloc was a threat to all fellow socialist states, thus justifying the need for military intervention in any state where socialist rule appeared to be unstable. Soviet leaders realised that if they didn’t intervene, it could call into question Soviet willingness to uphold other regimes in the Eastern Bloc, thus potentially inspiring other anti-communist uprisings. Furthermore, the large Muslim population of the satellite states (particularly the rapidly-developing Central Asian states now known as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan) shared ethnic identity and religion with Afghanistan - any dissent from Afghans, particularly on the basis of defending Islamic values, could easily spark similar anti-communist moves in these adjacent states, again, directly threatening Soviet control and communist rule. Finally, many Soviet leaders felt they were helping Afghanistan stabilise its government, who had (under Tariki) asked them for aid initially, and which, by now, had suffered more than half a decade of violence and political turbulence.

Consequently, on the 24th December, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. A massive military airlift was organised into Kabul, which involved an estimated 280 transport aircraft and three divisions of almost 8,500 men each. Within less than three days, the Soviets took Kabul, assassinated Amin, and installed a moderate and pro-Moscow leader, Babrak Karmal, in his place. The reforms the Soviet Union attempted to put into place to modernise the DRA were once again rejected by the population, who viewed the atheist Soviets as invaders, defiling Islam and their traditional culture. Consequently, the mujahideen declared a jihad on the Soviets.

Initially, the USSR underestimated the consequences of their invasion - which was meant to be a quick intervention to firmly establish a cohesive and successful communist government - and left suppression of the rebellions to the Afghan army. However, this underestimation was short-lived. The Afghan army was hugely ineffective: it suffered from mass desertions, and the troops who did remain largely lacked morale. The Soviets, now forced to establish control with their own troops, were met with widespread and fierce resistance when they moved out of Kabul, and into the countryside. The Red Army was ill-prepared for the desert and mountain landscapes of Afghanistan; the mujahideen, on the other hand, knew their territory extremely well, and used the deserts and mountainous terrain to their advantage to wear down their opponents. The mujahideen were also extremely motivated, as they were fighting to defend their home country, religion, and identity from a foreign invader. In addition to this, opposition against the Soviets extended beyond the mujahideen: Marxist groups, moderate Islamic groups, and Islamic extremist groups all participated in violence against their common enemy. In retaliation, the Soviet Army began increasing the violence against their enemies, destroying entire villages to weed out individual soldiers, and murdering surviving civilians to cover up the war crimes they had witnessed. It is estimated that one-and-ahalf million people - including up to one million civilians - were killed during the war.

Image right: Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989

Despite the huge losses of the Afghan people, for the Soviet Union, the war became increasingly expensive, and also hugely humiliating, with their infamous Red Army being repeatedly defeated by local guerrilla forces. Pressure from outside Afghanistan to step down also increased. The UN - which had debated whether Soviet involvement was invasion or intervention - eventually condemned the USSR for their actions and requested that the USSR remove their forces. The US began placing economic sanctions on the USSR and abolished most US-Soviet trade. Furthermore, many Middle Eastern countries condemned the invasion, and states within the USSR with Muslimmajority populations began to dissent. Approximately 15,000 Soviet troops were killed. The economic, political, and personal cost of the conflict was profound. The war persisted for almost a decade, until 1988, when Mikhail Gorbachev (the Soviet leader at the time, who would be the last leader before the collapse of the USSR) signed a deal to end the war. The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February 1989.

However, what was overlooked about the war at the time - and still is today - is the fact that the mujahideen were by no means isolated in their war against the Soviets. In fact, their victory was largely due to support from external powersmost notably, the US. Through what was known as ‘Operation Cyclone’, the US funnelled huge amounts of weapons and money to the mujahideen through Pakistan: by 1987, 600 million dollars were being sent per year to the fighters. Pakistan acted as an extremely powerful middle-man in this situation, having the power to pick and choose which groups would be funded, and increasingly provided support to extremist groups (who were then only considered by the US and Pakistan as anti-Soviet freedom fighters). The US also gave the mujahideen military training as part of Operation Cyclone. Additionally, many other Muslim nations, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, provided financial aid to the mujahideen. Whilst these nations did help, it was undoubtedly the US who supported the mujahideen the most. US aid provided to the mujahideen to counter the Soviet invasion was essentially just part of the wider Cold War game played between the two superpowers, in which Afghanistan was nothing more than a pawn. The eventual Soviet defeat is regarded by most historians as significantly contributing to the complete fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 (notably just two years after the end of the Soviet-Afghan War) and the establishment of America as the world’s sole superpower.

Therefore, despite their huge involvement in the war, as soon as Gorbachev signed the deal to end the conflict, the US and USSR completely backed out of any Afghan politics, and the war-ravaged country was left to fend for itself. The mujahideen - the supposed victors - formed a coalition government with many of the other groups who had fought against the Soviet forces. This hastily-assembled government naturally resulted in huge in-fighting, largely based on ethnic and nationalist divides. It was this in-fighting that led to the birth of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban group, who were economically supported by Pakistan based on nationalist support for the Pashtun (an ethnic group that the Taliban members were part of). Initially, the Taliban were hugely supported by the Afghan population, who were weary of the corruption, brutality, and the incessant infighting between the mujahideen warlords. The mujahideen was eventually overthrown by the Taliban, who seized Kabul in September 1996: by the end of the year, Afghanistan was an Islamic emirate, largely controlled by the Taliban, and largely funded by Pakistan.

The Soviet-Afghan War undeniably transformed the political landscape of Afghanistan, and the lives of its citizens, who have faced almost constant, immeasurable levels violence and political instability since the late 1970s. The blame for this cannot be totally attributed to the USA and the USSR - the population of Afghanistan, largely divided by tribalism, nationalism, and ethnic conflict, were repeatedly resistant to any reform, thus creating huge political instability. However, both the USA and the USSR were undeniably responsible for exploiting and exacerbating the country’s political instability to an end for their own gains, destroying countless lives in the process. This is, in many ways, an underdeog story with tragic consequences. The anger and nationalism within Afghanistan and their historical ability to deter invading forces from staking a claim to their land (as early as the late 1800's where neither Britain nor Russia could ever truly control the area) has in turn led to extreme fractionalisation amongst their own people, harboring the growth of much more extremist ideologies.