Afghanistan Flag on Our Flagpole

Afghanistan

Opposition to PDPA reforms, such as its land redistribution policy and modernization of (traditional Islamic) civil and marriage laws, led to unrest which aggravated to rebellion and revolt around October 1978, first in eastern Afghanistan. That uprising quickly expanded into a civil war waged by guerrilla mujahideen against regime forces countrywide. The Pakistani government provided these rebels with covert training centers, while the Soviet Union sent thousands of military advisers to support the PDPA regime. As early as mid-1979, the United States were supporting Afghan mujahideen and foreign “Afghan Arab” fighters through Pakistan’s ISI.

Meanwhile, increasing friction between the competing factions of the PDPA — the dominant Khalq and the more moderate Parcham — resulted in the dismissal of Parchami cabinet members and the arrest of Parchami military officers under the pretext of a Parchami coup.

Soviet Troops 1987
Soviet Troops 1987

In September 1979, President Taraki was assassinated in a coup within the PDPA orchestrated by fellow Khalq member Hafizullah Amin, who assumed the presidency. The Soviet Union was displeased with Amin’s government, and decided to intervene and invade the country on 27 December 1979, killing Amin that same day.

A Soviet-organized regime, led by Parcham’s Babrak Karmal but inclusive of both factions, filled the vacuum. Soviet troops in more substantial numbers were deployed to stabilize Afghanistan under Karmal, and as a result the Soviets were now directly involved in what had been a domestic war in Afghanistan, which war from December 1979 until 1989 is therefore also known as the Soviet–Afghan War. The United States, supporting the Afghan mujahideen and foreign “Afghan Arab” fighters since mid-1979 through Pakistan’s ISI, and Saudi Arabia, from now on delivered for billions in cash and weapons, including two thousand FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, to Pakistan as support for the anti-Soviet mujahideen.

The PDPA prohibited usury, declared equality of the sexes, and introduced women to political life. During this war from 1979 until 1989, Soviet forces, their Afghan proxies and rebels killed between 562,000 and 2 million Afghans, and displaced about 6 million people who subsequently fled Afghanistan, mainly to Pakistan and Iran. Many countryside villages were bombed and some cities such as Herat and Kandahar were also damaged from air bombardment. Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province functioned as an organisational and networking base for the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance, with the province’s influential Deobandi ulama playing a major supporting role in promoting the ‘jihad’. Meanwhile, the central Afghan region of Hazarajat, which in this period was free of Soviet or PDPA government presence, experienced an internal civil war from 1980 to 1984.

Faced with mounting international pressure and numerous casualties, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, but continued to support Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah until 1992.

Proxy and Civil War and Islamic Jihad 1989–96:

Mujahideen forces in October 1978 had started a guerrilla or civil war against the PDPA’s government of Afghanistan. After the Soviet invasion, December 1979, replacing one PDPA President for another PDPA President, the mujahideen proclaimed to be battling the hostile PDPA “puppet regime”. In 1987, Mohammad Najibullah had become Afghan President, and after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 he was still sponsored by the Soviet Union, and fought by the mujahideen.

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