Afghanistan - a bit of history

Apr 14th 2021 - Updated Mar 29th 2023

As President Biden announced on Apr 14th, 2021, US, NATO and other allied troops will withdraw from Afghanistan by Sep 11th.

The withdrawal will end America’s longest war, just shy of 20 years, but it will probably not end the war in Afghanistan. On the contrary, fighting will most likely escalate. The Taliban is not really willing to negotiate with the Afghan government, and warlords with powerful militias are active again. There is fear of another civil war.

During the next few months there will be negotiations about peace and power sharing and the form of the future Afghan government.

All parties in these talks should remember what the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said about peace negotiations: "You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies."

That means that everyone has to compromise, everyone has to give something so peace, or more accurately a workable compromise, can be reached.

For the sake of the people of Afghanistan, let’s hope some kind of peace can be worked out.

The withdrawal will end the current US military involvement in Afghanistan, but also only one chapter in the history of the conflict. Remember, this did not start when the US invaded after 9/11 in 2001, this conflict has long roots.

I spent a few years in Afghanistan, in civilian projects, in 2010-12, but I am by no means an expert on Afghan history or politics. The following short(ish) history is not meant to be exhaustive, but only an attempt to give a general idea of the background and some context of the situation. Knowing what experiences and history the Afghan people have, it is easier to understand the news reporting on the peace negotiations.

A Short(ish) History

No point in going too far back, so starting from 1973, a point that a lot of people still alive today would remember. If you were a teenager then, you would be over 60 today.

This was the era of the Cold War, the world divided to the democratic, or in some cases right-wing West, the communist countries led by the Soviet Union and China, and the smaller amount of non-aligned countries balancing between those two.

People could not move freely between these two spheres of influence, and as absurd as it sounds in today’s Europe, to highlight that division, there was a wall in Berlin cutting the city in two, the East and the West.

Nixon was still president, and the Watergate scandal was going on, and there was still war in Vietnam.

For those who do not follow world affairs or politics, this was one year before ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo.

From a Kingdom to a Republic

In July 1973, the ex-Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan seized power in a bloodless coup from his first cousin King Zahir Shah, and established a republic, with himself as president. Daoud Khan had good relations with the Soviet Union, but also had a policy of non-alignment regarding the Cold War powers.

His government included communists who had supported his coup, but after a few years he also started to build relations in the Middle East with countries which were anti-Soviet.

Daoud Khan also had a long-running Pashtunistan policy apparent already during his time as Prime Minister in 1953-63. The aim was to reunite ethnic Pashtun areas of Pakistan with Afghanistan, which obviously led to bad relations, including proxy wars, with Pakistan.

1978 the Saur Revolution

The Soviets were not happy with Afghanistan improving relations with the West, and in April 1978 the communists staged a coup, the Saur Revolution.

Daoud Khan and most of his family were killed in the coup. The communists came to power and established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, with Nur Mohammed Taraki as president.

They implemented a socialist agenda including a land reform, which proved to be extremely unpopular in tribal rural Afghanistan. In general, modernisation and secularisation were unpopular, especially in the religious countryside, and changing the traditional flag to a copy of the Soviet flag was a total failure. They also started brutal political repression, and executed over 25,000 political prisoners.

1979 was a consequential year for the region as a whole and for the rise of political Islam.

The Iranian Revolution had been gathering speed for a while, and the Shah went to exile in January, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in February, and in April Iran became an Islamic republic. Later in the year the situation escalated and led to the US embassy hostage crisis.

The Soviets were alarmed by the Iranian revolution, and were wary of Islamic revolution spreading. Iran was next door both to Afghanistan and the Soviets, and there were about 40 million Muslim citizens in the Soviet Union, mostly along the borders with Iran and Afghanistan.

Also March 1979 saw the US backed Israel-Egypt peace agreement, which for the Soviets was proof that Egypt was moving into the US camp. It was signed in Washington D.C. by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, and negotiated with the help of the Jimmy Carter administration.

In November 1979, the Grand Mosque in Mecca was seized by Islamist militants, and the siege and the battle resulted in hundreds of casualties, and shook Saudi Arabia and the wider Islamic world to the core. Saudi rulers ended up giving more power to religious conservatives, not cracking down on religious militants. They did not see the militants as too religious, but having wrong interpretations of Islam, so their remedy was more religion, provided by the establishment.

In Afghanistan, Taraki’s rule became increasingly unpopular, and the situation deteriorated rapidly. Serious uprisings began soon after the failed reforms and the brutal repressions, and in September 1979, Hafizullah Amin, another leader in the revolution, seized power and subsequently had Taraki killed.

Amin could not pacify the country, he was seen as part of the repressive leadership, and the Soviets decided to replace him.

The Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan was probably influenced to varying degrees, by the deteriorating situation in the country, the Iranian revolution and the possibility of the growth of militant Islam next door, and the Israel-Egypt peace agreement and other real or perceived US advancements in the Middle East.

The view in the politburo was that Afghanistan can not be lost to the West, that would mean having an anti-Soviet country on the southern border, and not a communist or at least a non-aligned and a friendly country.

Soviet Union invasion

So, on December 27th 1979 Amin was killed in a coup and the Soviets invaded the country. And Babrak Karmal, yet another leader in the revolution, was installed as a leader.

Islamic countries, along with the West, condemned the invasion, and support for the Afghan guerrillas, the Mujahideen, began to flow into the country.

US, UK, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China among others provided weapons, and Saudi Arabia also later promised to match US funding. At first, the idea was to provide Soviet weapons, so it would seem that the Mujahideen had seized them on the battlefield, but later the aid also included more sophisticated weapons like Stinger missiles.

The military assistance was funneled through Pakistani ISI, which of course had their own agenda regarding Afghanistan. So, because the Pakistani ISI preferred them, the aid focused on militant Islamist groups, including those led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani. Saudis, who matched US funding, also favored Islamist groups, after all this was a Holy War against communist non-believers, and many of the volunteer Mujahideen were Saudis, including Osama bin Laden.

The non-military aid also included building and funding religious schools, Madrassas, for Afghan refugees. Later some of these schools became bases for militant Islam.

The aid to Afghanistan grew during the Reagan administration, and became the largest aid program to an insurgency in the world. The US aid alone was over $20 billion over the course of the war.

The war soon settled into a pattern which would be familiar to US soldiers more than 20 years later, the Soviets controlled the cities and major roads, and the Mujahideen controlled most of the countryside. In the 21st century it would be coalition troops in cities and the Taliban in the countryside.

The nearly ten year Soviet-Afghan war caused, about one million dead (some estimates are as high as 2 million), and forced about 5 million Afghans to flee as refugees. Other legacies of the war were the more than a million disabled, and at least 10 million landmines scattered around the country.

While the Soviets were fighting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, Iraq invaded Iran in 1980. That brutal war lasted until 1988, and cost the lives of at least half a million people. The war ended in a stalemate, with both sides claiming victory, and resulted in no territorial changes.

As the Soviets became bogged down in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan they became disillusioned in Babrak Karmal’s ineffective regime. In 1986 they initiated a change and raised Mohammad Najibullah to the leadership, and Karmal moved to live in Moscow. Najibullah started a policy of “national reconciliation”, but it did not work, as the different insurgent groups did not trust the government enough to start serious negotiations. One reason probably was that Najibullah was the former head of the Afghan secret police, and was seen as responsible for the abuses of the previous government.

Soviet withdrawal

Withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan was announced in July 1987, and by February 1989 the last Soviet troops had left the country.

The Soviets still gave aid to the government, but the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, and the aid stopped. The US and others also still supported the Mujahideen, but once the Soviet Union was gone and the Cold War won, the George H. W. Bush administration, and the West in general, lost interest in the country. The Berlin wall had fallen in 1989, and there was a lot to do in re-integrating the Central European countries back into Europe.

The reconstruction of Afghanistan was left to US allies, Pakistan, which had its own agenda, and Saudi Arabia, which naturally preferred groups with an Islamist view.

Besides the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the West was focused on another crisis. Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, and that resulted in the Gulf War. The world concentrated on that conflict, built a military coalition of 35 countries, and pushed Iraq out of Kuwait by the end of February 1991.

The wars in the Balkans started in March 1991, and continued in some form for the next ten years. The West and especially Europeans were focused on the war on their own backyard, and Afghanistan was pushed even further out of the front pages.

Civil war

Najibullah’s government was largely expected to collapse without Soviet troops in the country, but it managed to hold on until April 1992. Once it did collapse, Najibullah took refuge in the UN compound, but was prevented from leaving the country. He resided there until 1996, declined an offer to leave when the Taliban was closing in, and was promptly killed by the Taliban when they took over Kabul.

When Najibullah’s government collapsed, some of the Mujahideen groups agreed to form an interim government, but it did not really work, as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami and other militant groups did not join the agreement. Soon the situation deteriorated into a civil war, with at least five Mujahideen factions fighting over the control of Kabul.

Most of these groups were supported by foreign states, and at this point some US aid was still channeled into the country, but during the first Clinton administration the aid stopped.

Pakistan supported Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Pashtun Hezb-e-Islami, Iran the Shia and Hazara Hizb-e Wahdat, Saudis supported Sunni and Pashtun Ittehad-e-Islami to promote Wahhabi Islam, and Uzbekistan in turn backed secular(ish) and Uzbek Junbish-i-Milli led by Abdul Rashid Dostum, who defected from Najibullah’s government in 1992. Jamiat-e-Islami led by Burnahuddin Rabbani and militarily by Ahmad Shah Massoud had a mainly Tajik power base, and had been favored by some in the West during the Soviet period. They represented the interim government established by the power sharing agreement.

Hekmatyar’s group started shelling Kabul with artillery and thousands of rockets, and the other groups responded with similar force. The groups fought each other, and formed alliances and broke them when it suited their plans.

Depending on how you define destruction, between a third and half of Kabul was destroyed, thousands died, and half a million refugees fled the city.

The civil war expanded to other cities, and the destruction continued, and resulted in more refugees. The ethnic nature of the different groups also played a part in the atrocities, with groups targeting real or perceived supporters of other groups.

The Taliban

In 1994, Mullah Muhammad Omar founded the Taliban in Kandahar, which drew recruits from the students of the religious schools, the Madrassas, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Ethnically the students were mainly Pashtun, but also Tajik and Uzbek. The Taliban wanted to establish an Islamic government, and saw the other groups as criminal warlords who did not follow the teachings of Islam.

Meanwhile the West was focused on the Rwandan genocide, and then the subsequent Congo wars, and the ongoing conflict in the Balkans.
The Russians, on the other hand, were busy fighting in Chechnya.

With Pakistani support the Taliban gradually gained more power, and were able to capture Kabul in September 1996. They established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, moved the capital to Kandahar, and ruled according to their interpretation of Sharia law.

Some of the other Mujahideen groups formed the Northern Alliance, and managed to hold on to parts of the country, and about 30% of the country’s population. So, the civil war continued and resulted yet again in more destruction and more refugees.

The Taliban rule and warfare were brutal. They used scorched-earth tactics, razed entire villages, including orchards and fields, and forced people to leave their homes and farms. They forbade women to move freely and forced them to wear the burka, and denied women the right to work or be educated. In addition, they engaged in cultural destruction by destroying historical artifacts and famously destroyed the 6th century Bamiyan Buddhas.

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda

In 1996 Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan from Sudan, established good relations with the Taliban and set up training camps and bases for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were free to operate in the country and continued to raise money from old Soviet era supporters, participated in the civil war, and were able to create new training camps with Pakistani help.

On September 9th 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated, allegedly by al-Qaeda as a favour to the Taliban, and two days later, on September 11th, the World Trade Center towers were hit.

And as they say, the rest is history. The Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden and the George W. Bush administration started the invasion on October 7th, 2001.

… 20 years later

And then, after nearly 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan, after the Iraq war, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the War on Terror, the emergence of the Islamic State, the start of the Syrian Civil War, and the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, Biden, the fourth US president to deal with this chapter of the conflict, announced the withdrawal of US and allied troops from Afghanistan.

To put it mildly, the withdrawal ended up being chaotic, with panicked crowds at Kabul airport trying desperately to get into the departing planes.

The last US troops left Afghanistan by August 30th, 2021, and Kabul promptly fell to the Taliban.

Then despite promises to the contrary, the Taliban, true to their fundamentalist roots, pushed women out of the workforce, universities and schools.

And as was expected, Western nations mostly suspended humanitarian aid, and the World Bank and the IMF stopped payments.

The result of the collapse of humanitarian aid was that, by the end of the year, the UN estimated that only 2% of the population had enough to eat.

Also, although the war against the West ended with the troop withdrawal, now that the Taliban were the government, they faced an insurgency from the Islamic State Khorasan, the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan. And, in some parts of the country, they were also fighting the remnants of the old western trained and equipped Afghan army.

So, now the Taliban are the government and they run the country as they please, following their fundamentalist rules. The international community could do something about this, but since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, everyone has been focused on Ukraine.

History repeats itself, and Afghanistan is pushed out of the news again; I have actually lost count of how many times this has happened.

And like always in these situations, the people of the country will pay the price. And as long as the war in Ukraine continues, they will keep on paying.

To be continued… unfortunately