Afghan Wars

Series of wars that swept through Afghanistan from 1979 to 2001. A Marxist coup in Afghanistan in 1978 initiated waves of battle and turmoil, including a Soviet invasion, and set the stage for the rise of the Taliban and that group's eventual defeat by American forces following the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

A communist revolution in the Afghan city of Kabul in 1978 installed a Marxist government in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union had privately funded and directed communist networks at Kabul University and in the Afghan army for nearly two decades before this political takeover. The communist coup was an immediate response to the arrest of communist leaders in Kabul, on order of Afghan president Mohammed Daoud, following a protest in April 1978. Daoud was shot just days afterward.

With the death of Daoud and the installation of a Marxist regime, the Soviet Union now had a cooperative communist government in Afghanistan. However, the political takeover by the communists did not correlate to physical control of the entire country. Anticommunist factions operated throughout the countryside, and in the city of Herat, an Afghan army captain emboldened by the Iranian Islamic revolution called for a jihad, or holy war, against the communist invaders during the spring of 1979. Afghan army officers in the city of Jalalabad followed suit, and desertions from the communist-led Afghan army multiplied. Soon, Muslim fighters from [Page 3]around the world traveled to Afghanistan to take part in the holy war. The Soviet Union soon determined that without its military intervention, the communist Afghan government faced annihilation.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 and supported the communist regime against the battling mujahideen (an Arabic term that identifies the practitioners of jihad). Within two days of the invasion, the Soviet forces secured Kabul and installed a new government, which requested the continuing presence of some 85,000 Soviet troops, a mixture of airborne and motorized infantry personnel. The jihadists, however, proved formidable, and the Soviets—the second most powerful military power in the world—eventually resorted to using napalm, poison gas, helicopter gunships, and land mines against the rebels. Victory proved elusive, however, and the Soviet Union's experience in Afghanistan began to be widely compared to the American experience in Vietnam. By 1982, the mujahideen controlled 75% of Afghanistan. The United Nations condemned the Soviet invasion in January 1980, but a resolution calling for the withdrawal of Soviet forces was vetoed by the Soviet Union, which was a permanent member of the Security Council.

The Soviet Union ultimately found itself in a quagmire and could not transform military force into political legitimacy for the Marxist regime. By February 1989, the Soviets had completely withdrawn from Afghanistan, and the communist regime fell by April 1992, initiating a wave of transnational war in the war-torn country.

The unity among the Afghan people that had ultimately defeated the superior military might of the Soviet Union quickly dissolved as factions fought for control of the Afghan capital, Kabul. The beneficiary of the factious fighting proved to be the Taliban, which emerged as the faction capable of gaining control of the capital. The Taliban consisted of antimodernist religious extremists from the Pashtun ethnic group. Backed by Pakistan, where the Pashtuns wielded military and political control, the Taliban seized control of Kabul in September 1996. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan hosted religious zealots from other countries, including al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In September 2001, bin Laden assassinated the Afghan leader of the anti-Taliban forces, Ahmad Shah Massoud, and then carried out attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the United States on September 11, 2001.

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