[MUSIC]
Let's now look at the way the resistance
to modernity and modernization efforts plays out in Afghanistan.
In particular, once the Soviet Union gets involved
and you have, we have this massive Islamic resistance.
And you will soon find out that the, this video is
not without reason called Jihadi Gangsters,
because we're dealing with a criminal
economy that is developing in conflict and that's something that we see not
only in Afghanistan, but that's a common characteristic of conflict.
So, the war economy that grows as a result of the civil conflict
becomes one of the determining characteristics of the setup of the
mujahideen resistance. So, pay attention
to that aspect. We have already encountered Mohammed
Daoud, the cousin and brother-in-law of the last king.
Here we see a stamp commemorating his and if
you look carefully at the stamp you already see
what is going to happen, because the stamp commemorates
him as the president of the Republic of Afghanistan.
And that's exactly what he does. Zahir Shah is on a trip to Europe
in July 1973 and Daoud uses the opportunity
to get back into power, and deposes his cousin.
And declares a republic, with himself as president and prime minister.
So it's the classical
autocratic setup as we encounter all too often in these kind of events.
His ability to do so is following a disaster, disastrous drought
that has struck Afghanistan from 1971 till 72.
And in particular, the very insufficient government response to
that drought and the famine that has developed out of it.
So we see again, state failure producing an opening for the enemies of the
state and that's perhaps a general lesson you might
want to remember, is when we see that states are
unable to perform what they're supposed to do, they this
weakness is often exploited by enemies both internal and external.
The 1964 constitution that we discussed in the last video had as one of
its provision the exclusion of the members of
the royal family from all public offices.
And it was, it doesn't take too much creativity to know or to
surmise that it was a provision directly aimed at Daoud, and excluding him from politics.
And it's clearly a situation in which he did not, an ambitious man like
him and a fervent nationalist like him did not find congenial.
So he was bidding his time until he found an opening and that's in the 73.
He finds it.
So we see him pursuing a relatively cautious modernization
program internally. Basically taking up this
story where he left it off in 63.
So he's not rapidly trying to change the country but
its he does instigate a policy of modernization.
But as in his last reign, he again starts
a relatively ambitious foreign policy particularly with respect
to, he rekindles that antagonism with Pakistan over
that Pashtunistan issue that we have come to know.
And so, the two things for you to remember is that he's cautious with
respect to domestic reform, but extremely ambitious
with respect to his almost jingoistic foreign policy.
And
we have now in 1973, he promulgates a new constitution reflecting that
change from a monarchy to a republic, the country gives itself a new flag.
And it's based now on, ... geared towards the
the autocratic power of Daoud, and his, rule now is based on
two planks.
One is this, the renewed strength of friendship with the Soviet
Union, and the reliance on the Soviet material, and military aid.
And secondly as I mentioned, his
perennial obsession with the Pashtunistan issue.
So he wants to attack that issue once again, and here
we see that map that we have now come to know quite well.
And he sees a particular opening to reopen that issue due to, if you
remember from the last week's lecture, Pakistan had just gone through
this traumatic defeat in 1971 at the hands of India, which had
brought the loss of Bangladesh, the secession of Bangladesh.
You know, half of the population is gone.
A third of the
army is gone, a quarter of the air force, etc.
It's a very traumatic loss for Pakistan and
therefore Pakistan goes through a period of great internal turmoil.
So Daoud thinks this is a good moment to reopen that issue at that point
of Pakistani weakness. And again don't forget
that Pakistan is, at that time the, the rump
Pakistan that remains the former West
Pakistan, is internally divided across along ethnic lines.
And it's now experiencing renewed ethnic nationalism internally.
In particular with respect to the Beluch minority that is now striving to,
to gain autonomy, if not independence, and
that's clearly something that also interests Iran.
So,
Iran supplies, helps Pakistan in suppressing that revolt, but
it's clearly an additional factor that weakens Pakistan.
So we see,
despite this weakness of Pakistan, you see the,
the Soviet Union leaning on Daoud to counter
rapprochement with Pakistan because they are
not interested in a war with Pakistan.
So we see in 1976 he recognizes the Durand line.
And so formally we would expect now the country being
back on a path towards consolidation, so he could now
attend more to his, to the internal reforms that he wants to do.
But it's at this time now in 1978 that the communist
party on which he relied to sustaining them in
power is now staging a coup against Daoud. And it's a
bloody coup, they kill him and most of his family, and it's
a coup that is staged by leftist officers in the armed forces.
And here, it's perhaps useful to remark that in
the past years, many, many officers had been trained
in the Soviet Union and had used this pier
to become acquainted with leftist ideas obviously.
So there's a very strong communist movement
in the armed forces.
And remember also what we said about the university graduates, there's not
much else where a secular
socialist-oriented minority in a place like
Afghanistan would organize themselves but in the armed forces or in the
state bureaucracy because there's no, nowhere
else where they could find employment.
So what we see here now is the, as it comes to be known the
Saur Revolution, which is named after the
month of April, where the revolution took place.
As you can see from the imagery of
the stamps celebrating ... this revolution.
It's a classical communist takeover in in an underdeveloped third world country.
It's a coup staged by the
PDPA, Popular Democratic Party of Afghanistan
as the local communist party is known.
But it's important to remember now and this is
actually the flag this country gives itself and you see
obviously this is the Soviet imagery that they, they
use both in the stamps, the propaganda, the flag now.
But it's important to underline here that this is an
internal event.
There have obviously being strong communist
presence in Afghanistan for the years past.
Certainly since 73 which was a revolution, which was a left-leaning
revolution already when the Republic was pronounced, but it's not a puppet
putsch.
It's a putsch done by the Afghan Communist
party itself, and there are strong internal divisions within
that party so we cannot see this party as
... almost by remote control from Moscow.
And that is important as we see the story unfolds now.
So, in the Saur Revolution days not much Soviet participation whatsoever.
The
communists who come to power now, they are drawn from precisely that small
alienated secularly educated minority
group that we referred to earlier on that have
been raised in the state, new state educational institutions.
Many of whom have been trained in the polytechnics of the Soviet
Union had supplied Afghanistan with some of them had been trained in the
Soviet Union.
Many of them had also been trained in Western Countries, so it's
that, the type of educational through which this minority went through.
And the thing that I would like you to stress, to you, is that this small
minority with not much of a social base,
has now this enormous ambition to change this rural,
backward, traditional Afghanistan in a very short
period of time, into a modern socialist society.
You see here, some of the some images
that reflect this social, this aggressive social engineering that
is now undertaken by this small minority, and
that is the story I'd like you to remember.
It is a small minority using a very
weak institutional basis of a state to carry out
an extremely ambitious social engineering project.
And as you can imagine, this runs into social
resistance that its institutions are not geared to cope with.
That's the story of the conflict that we were now dealing with.
It relies on three prongs to carry out this
ambitious project of social engineering.
First is classical, it's repression through its institutions of coercion,
primarily the army and the police. Secondly it's Agrarian reform.
Through which it win hopes to win other the rural population.
So it's two prong.
It's abolishing the usury and the exploitative rural credit schemes that
existed and distributing land.
Here we see in this picture, the land distribution at the time.
And again, remember that land distribution in
this type of social policies, where things had
at the time, were undertaken by all
sorts of other states, not just communist states.
You remember the White Revolution in Iran.
It's the same kind of thinking, to change the
rural population, change the dynamics of this rural economy.
And thirdly, they relied on mass educational campaigns with the idea
that once people were made literate, they would be more perceptive
to modern ideas and leave behind the
traditional, religiously based anachronism as you're seeing by the elite.
They ruled by decree, they abolished in 73 the Daoud constitution.
And on a side note, the communist era is very rich in constitutional documents.
They produced several constitutional documents during
the relatively short period they are empowered with.
And that's again in line with general
communist practice that often had somewhat more flexible
approach to the constitutional texts. They were often amended
quite rapidly, also in other communist
countries, and that is what we see here as well.
So the policies that they now
set out, they are primarily concentrated in a number
of fields.
One is, I've mentioned is... decree no six that they issue
on the prohibition on usury and land credit, the system that existed.
So they prohibited the mortgaging of land
to secure as a collateral for credits.
And that obviously might have been well intentioned,
but it runs into problems because all these transactions
are oral in a predominantly illiterate population.
So it's very difficult to control them.
Secondly, they are implemented by inexperienced governmental staff.
They rely primarily on school teachers,
that are already on the government payroll.
And this is exactly the problem I just mentioned.
It's the inexistent, or very weak state institutions on which they
can rely to carry out this ambitious social engineering project.
So these school teachers are not equipped to carry out as demanding
and as controversial a task as supervising the prohibition of land credit.
And most importantly, it short circuits the
traditional access to credit, that local populations have.
And again because the state is too weak to put
something else in it's place, for example, through an agricultural bank.
I mean, this is decided at the central level, but
the agricultural bank is not present in the rural populations.
That leads to the de facto abolition of credit lines
for the rural population and that creates massive problems.
So you now
have, quite predictably, a massive resistance by
landlords, by money lenders, who are often
the tribal populations, the nomads
who have historically played this role.
Money lenders to the settled agriculturalists.
And these two groups find ready allies in the clergy, in the Ullemah.
Who are often landholders themselves, who are
often the beneficiaries of pious endowments, the Waqf
Something that you already we had exactly the same
problem in the Ottoman empire, in the Iranian constitutional revolution.
So it's, the story repeats itself here.
So you see now an alliance between landholders
those who have access to credit and the Ullemah,
who often are, they comprise the same group.
And it's, in a sense it's an unholy
alliance to defend the traditional practice of usury.
Which is, if you have any understanding of Islamic
law, one of the key prohibitions in Islamic law.
But here you have the religious classes allying themselves in order to defend
and use an extortionate credit system that had been in place.
So it's another one of these paradoxes but it's not limited to Afghanistan.
We see the same ... also in the
other places that we looked at in this course.
And also predictably the mass literacy campaigns
results in massive resistance, because again it directly effects the traditional
hegemony that the clergy exercised over primary education.
So, it directly affects the
professional interests, and also the normative interests.
They, they don't like what is being taught in the state schools.
The socialist ideology that comes with the literacy campaigns.
And certainly last but certainly not least, the,
the changes that are introduced with respect to Decree Number Seven,
dealing with the deposition of women, are very
much resisted in the rural population. So the unveiling of woman.
You saw the earlier picture of the women
demonstrating in the now communist regime.
None of them was wearing a veil. You have now the prohibition
on polygamy. You have
severe restriction on mard, the dowry traditionally being given to a woman into
marriage. Which in the Afghan context often was
a cover for the literal the virtual selling of brides into marriage.
Which something we see to this day, which
results in a very exposed and precarious social
position for the women who are sold in this manner.
So that's something that the modernizing leftist government seeks to address.
And that obvious encounters massive resistance.
So,
these are the policies that this socialist government wants to do.
The thing to remember also is that the Afghan government
the Afghan Communist Party reflects the general structure of Afghanistan.
So like most other institutions, it's also divided along ethnic lines.
You have the Pashtun wing which is predominantly Tajik and Dari speaking.
And you have
the Khalq wing, which is
predominantly Pashto speaking and Pashto ethnic.
And you have the, this is reflected also in the power structure of people who hate
each other with a vengeance, but are now locked into this communist government.
You have Taraki and Amin, who together, struggled to maintain this government.
And ultimately you have the, an internal putsch in the communist government.
Amin ultimately murders Taraki, and its that murder that
then convinces a very reluctant Soviet union to interfere.
It's the story to which we come in a minute.
But let's stay for a minute at the massive resistance that I hinted at.
What happens to these large numbers of people in the rural population
who do not like the social engineering now being imposed by a government and a
state that hither to was basically non-existent to them?
And it's
what you would expect from a fierce mountain people.
They take to the mountain and start resisting, violently.
And they are helped in that endeavor by
the availability of a safe haven in Pakistan.
Pakistan obviously is not at all unhappy about that situation.
They have not forgotten the
aggressive posturing of Afghanistan with respect
to the Pashtunistan issue.
And we have also in, if you remember
all, the lecture last week about Pakistan.
We now have a military coup in Pakistan with Zia-ul-Haq, who came to power
and who is himself strongly committed towards an Islamic vision of society.
So he opens, he receives these people
who are now fleeing government repression with open
arms and allows them to set up
staging grounds and training camps on Pakistani territory.
And all this happens before the arrival of the Soviet Union.
This is important to remember.
And also before the arrival of Soviet Union, we see the arrival of American and
Saudi financial aid channelled through Pakistan to these groups.
The one thing to note here is that in December
78, Amin and Taraki are presenting the two wings of the communist party.
Go to Moscow to renew the treaty of friendship
and alliance that Afghanistan had with the Soviet Union.
And there's now a new, it looks like
a standard renewal of this treaty that had existed
in some form since 1921 when King Amanullah concluded it for the first time.
But there's now a new provision inserted, and that calls
for Soviet military assistance in case the Afghan government needs it.
And that should signal
to everybody, in particular the Pakistanis and the American
backers, that their interference would result in the arrival of the Red Army.
But that warning is received but ignored by the Pakistanis.
And it's also, we need to remember, that already since the 60s,
and dramatically increased over the period of the republics in 73.
We have already very large numbers of
Soviet civilian and military advisers in the country.
So, the arrival of the Red Army as
an invasion force is certainly a very dramatic incident
but it's... not the
beginning of the Soviet presence in the country.
That is now the background. We now see it as I already hinted
at, we have an internal power struggle in the Afghan communist party.
And then from March 78 onwards, they are leaning on to the
Soviet Union to send military troops to help them suppress
this eternal uprising. And let's not forget
that the Pakistani's who had received these refugees, had
allowed them to train on Pakistani territory and already by the
end of 78 we have 80,000 trained refugees who
are then becoming trained and then sent back as guerrilla forces.
And in January 79, you have the first dispatch
of trained guerrillas under Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who
then returned to Afghanistan to fight. So it's it's a rapidly
deteriorating security situation for the Afghan, the communist government.
And then you having in March 79, major
uprisings, particularly Herat, and some of the other big cities.
And the Afghan formal army
is not doing particularly well, with respect to this.
It suffers under, with widespread defections and desertions.
And it's effective army loses about a
third of its nominal strengths to these desertions.
And also the communist government had instigated a large
purge of the, of its generals. 60 out of 62 generals were purged.
They were replaced by junior officers from, from colonels or major rank.
And that obviously unsettles an existing army, however effective it might
have been and it probably wasn't very effective to start with.
So given that background, the communist government
is now repeatedly leaning on the Soviet
Union to lend its formal military support
through the dispatch of formal fight, combat troops.
And, that is resisted by the Soviet Union, and
it's the note that the KGB
head Yuri Andropov writes, and
gives to his colleagues in the Politburo in 19th March 79, it proves to be very
prophetic. So the Soviet Union knew exactly the
risks of an involvement.
And it was not at all an involvement it was keen to enter in.
So I'm quoting the head of the KGB in 7, in March 79.
We must consider very, very seriously the question of those
the question of whose cause we will
be supporting if we deploy forces into Afghanistan.
It's completely clear to us that Afghanistan is not ready at
this time to resolve all of the issues it faces through socialism.
The economy is backward, the Islamic religion predominates
and nearly all of the rural population is illiterate.
We know about Lenin's teaching
about the revolutionary situation.
Whatever situation we are talking about in
Afghanistan, it is not that type of situation.
Therefore, I believe that we can suppress a revolution in Afghanistan only with
the aid of our bayonets and that is for us completely inadmissible, end of quote.
So the Soviet Union knows the risks, both
in terms of its reputation and in
terms of the practical realities of setting through and
following, exceeding to that demand of the Afghan communists.
And ultimately, the only reason it does
is through the internal politics that then exist
in the communist party and here, I
already hinted at, it's a very complicated story.
And I quote Rasanayagam who describes it I think quite well.
I'm quoting.
The events surrounding the deposition Amin by Taraki can
only be described as a bizarre combination
of cloak-and-dagger politics taking place in a
cowboys and Indians scenario, end of quote.
So I spare you the details, but basically Amin kills Taraki and the
Soviets are not happy with that decision and they fear the complete fall of the
communist regime and the loss of prestige that would entail with respect to their
other allies. So it's the murder of Taraki by Amin
and the fear to reorientation of, of socialist Afghanistan's foreign policy.
It's the feared realignment with the West.
Or, even worse, the collapse of the communist government by, led now by
Ahmin that forces a very reluctant Soviet Union to swallow
that bitter pill and enter into this military engagement that they fully well
know is going to be very, very difficult if not disastrous.
So this leads to what in the West is generally described as the invasion
of Afghanistan by Soviet troops.
Or we not mutually described as a dispatch of
Soviet support troops to the communist government in Afghanistan.
Because that what it formally was.
It was an invasion brought by invitation in a sense by one faction in an,
in the communist party. That invasion
begins in on the 27th of December 79. And within
two days they establish control in center, in the
center and in the process of which they kill Mr. Amin.
And as you can see on this map, it's the arrival of Soviet
troops and their initial consolidation follows a
pattern that stays almost constant throughout the conflict.
And if you remember what we discussed
in the last video, follows the pattern that
the British experience already in the 19th century.
That is the Soviets establish control over the main
roads, the main communication lines and the main cities.
They have no control over the rural countryside and at
no point seek to establish control over the rural countryside.
But the control over the cities is at
no point challenged and that holds right up to the end of communist rule in
Afghanistan in 1992. And that's a surprising finding
for most of you, because the corollary of that observation is that also
all the destruction we see in the cities must have happened after 92.
The cities remain relatively peaceful and
certainly unaffected by major fighting right up to
1992. That's an interesting part when we come to
our assessment of the, mujahideen forces and
... our moral, and political assessment of their
efficiency, not efficiency their impact on the national development
of Afghanistan. So
we see now the Soviet Union is present in Afghanistan.
They install a more
congenial leader in the Communist party, Babrak Karmal.
And again, that changes now a few times in the next years, until we finally have the
last communist ruler Najibullah, who we will return to.
And we now see a Sovietization of Afghan policy domestically,
from 1979 till 89 when the Soviets depart again.
And that is a forced modernization along the Soviet
model. Here's a stamp that is trying
to propagate a non-smoking
in Afghanistan.
It's just an image that shows you the way that it's stressed.
It's a clear modernization campaign, more than it would be
in a different kind
of place which would be already more modernized itself.
You would probably see much more of
a juxtaposition between socialist and capitalist ideas.
Here, we see primarily a juxtaposition of modern ideas against traditional ideas.
That is the theme that dominates the Sovietization in the next ten years now.
And predictably this situation is exploited
now by the United States that is after all
locked into a global conflict with the
Soviet Union. And they see this as an
extremely advantageous opportunity
to weaken the Soviet army which is now
bogged down into an unwinnable guerrilla war.
And we see here now the aid that had already existed before, Saudi and American
channels through Pakistan, is now ratcheted up to very, very large levels.
And it's, we see,
it's a completely covert operation.
The United States denies any involvement in this, and that's also where we see that
don't they there are no American or Western arms supplied.
All the arms supplies are of Soviet or Chinese origin.
So they're bought somewhere else, and then brought there.
And it sets the stage
of Pakistani control over the mujahideen forces.
They are operating from Pakistani territory, and they
receive money, arms and ammunition through Pakistani institutions.
Primarily the secret service, but also to some extent the army.
And here on this map you see the,
the rough geographical distribution of the major mujahideen forces.
And Pakistan establishes, it recognizes seven of these groups that I
will shortly name you, but you don't have to remember them.
It's importance is just that
in the relatively little differentiation we see
among them, all of them are extremely
fundamentalist and extremely xenophobic, and adhere to an
extremely narrow atavistic notion of Islam.
There are no moderates among them.
And remember that Iran, the other big neighboring country, the
other big recipient of a large refugee population, is at
this time itself locked in, first in a revolution, and
then in a very, very disastrous war with the with Iraq.
So Iran at that time is not in a position to
supply any of the Afghan refugee groups with arms or political or moral support,
despite the existence of a large refugee population there.
So Pakistan dominates for the first ten years
of the Afghan conflict, which is the conflict
of the Soviet Union, is the period where
the Soviet Union is present, Pakistan controls
the supply of funds. And therefore, whoever pays the
piper, normally also calls the tune, and that's what we see here.
The seven forces that Pakistan recognizes, and through which it channels its
support are Jamiat-i-Islami of Burhanuddin Rabbani,
who was a Tajik, religious scholar. The second is a Hizb-i-Islamic
of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which is modeled on a, some Stalinist
notion of organization, and heâs a Pashtun, predominantly Pashtun group.
Then you have the Hizb-i-Islamic splinter group that is breaking
away from the, the Hikmatyar group under Maulana Younis Khalis,
which becomes a quite some importance because Mullah Omar, the
later founder of the Taliban movement, serves in that unit.
Then you have the Ittehad-i-Islami of Abdul Rasul Sayyyaf, who's a Wahabi.
Strongly committed to the Saudi notion of, of interpretation
of Islam and therefore also massive recipient of Saudi aid.
Someone who continues to play a big role in Afghan
politics and a very and with an extremely violent past.
And that is an environment where there is no shortage of violent people.
So you, you get an an understanding of what that episode means.
Then you have, the fifth group
is Harakat-i-inqilab-i-islami of Maulana Mohammad Nabi.
And then the sixth and seventh
groups are somewhat smaller and slightly more moderate.
You have, these are the Naqhshbandi sufi
order of that have traditionally had a big presence in Afghanistan under the leader,
leadership of Sighbatullah Mujadeddi. Who's nephew we will
re-encounter in the next video, in a completely different context.
So stay tuned.
And then, then the seventh group that the Pakistani's
support is Qadiriya sufi order of Pir Sayyed Ahmad Gailani.
Another one of the old families that have historically dominated that group.
And these groups now engage in a classical guerrilla
campaign against the Soviet Union. And it's
basically a war of attrition, where they fight with really...
small arms against the established Soviet installations.
And the Soviet fight a rather static defense throughout this period.
And
the,
we don't necessarily need to go into the details of the fighting.
It goes back and forth, it's categorized by enormous amounts
of people changing sides, betrayals, very rapidly and changing alternative.
All these seven groups, they don't fight coherently together.
They also there-, there's very strong competition between them.
Something that we no doubt see playing out afterwards.
What is surprising is that throughout this period, Pakistan maintains the fiction,
and so does the United States, that they are not actively engaged in that conflict.
They claim that the Afghan resistance was spontaneous, and
that it's therefore not in need of foreign support.
Either material or moral and that whatever material support was supplied,
it was modest and consisting of outdated equipment that was given out of existing
stocks and then replaced by modern equipment
form the armies of Pakistan and others.
And the third element that's surprising in
that it was conducted in almost paranoid secrecy,
by the, the three major powers that are
involved, the Saudis, the Pakistanis and the Americans.
Reflected among other things that only Warsaw Pact equipment was supplied.
So there was no supply of Western armament, and that only changes
very late in this conflict when the Americans agreed to supply stinger
surface to air missiles, that are very
effective the Soviet helicopters, the gun ships.
If you remember the picture of the destroyed
Soviet helicopter I showed you some videos back.
That's probably one of the results of a stinger rocket.
So, by large we see a static Soviet defense,
there is no attempt by them to regain control over
the countryside, they stay in the cities.
And they apart from the socialists the
impact this war has on their reputation with other socialist
allies, one of the key fears that the Soviet Union
has throughout this conflict is the contagion of Islamist thinking into
the neighboring.
Do you remember the chart of the
ethnic makeup of Afghanistan that I showed you two videos back?
Almost all of the Afghan ethnic groups have links with
groups in other, you know, in neighboring countries, many
of which reside in the then the Soviet Union.
You have the Turkmen, you have the Uzbeks, you have the Tajiks.
And therefore there is a strong Soviet fear that the Islamic radicalization that
exists now would ultimately spill into Soviet areas and unfortunately,
this is exactly what we then see. And then after the dissolution of
the Soviet Empire, that is exactly what leads to some of the
very bloody conflict in the southeastern periphery of the former Soviet Union.
In particular you all know the conflict in Chechnya and Dagestan, which
are direct results of the the radicalization that happens now as
in the process of the Islamic resistance to Soviet presence there.
And perhaps the biggest blunder of the Soviet Union in this war
was the underestimation of the resilience of these badly equipped,
but very fierce and, and locally well connected fighters.
And at the same time, link to this, the other magic,
the main blunder was the over estimation of the capability of
the formal Afghan army.
And those of you who have read newspapers in
the last ten years will not be surprised to
see that is exactly the same thing we see
with the American presence in the new Afghanistan, after 2001.
It's a perennial underestimation of the strength of the Taliban
insurgency, and the commensurate over reliance
on the ability of the Afghan security forces to control this conflict.
So, in a sense, it's a very tragic farce
of history repeating itself now for the third time.
First with the British and the Soviets, now with the Americans,
so it is exactly the same military story we see happening again.
Not surprising to you, this conflict has a
large emotional and ideological appeal to other Muslim nations.
Here we see stamps issued by the Islamic Republic of Iran
commemorating resistance and it's seen as a jihad, it's called a jihad.
It's called, a, you know, the common Muslim effort against an infidel
oppressor, and it's, as a result of this we see the formation of
Islamist international brigades, mainly drawn from some of the
Arab countries, but as far away as Malaysia and elsewhere.
And these troops have, as I hinted at already in the last
video, they have now, they play a very minor role in the actual fighting.
There is actually something resembling a jihad
tourism occurring where particularly Saudi people arrive
and they're there for two weeks and
they pay money to shoot a rocket at some Soviet that they don't even see.
So they don't actually, they're not particularly prominent in, as a
fighting force, but they are very, very important as supplies of funds.
And very importantly once the conflict is over, and once the defeat
of the Soviet Union has been achieved, these
people now return to their home countries and
often return to other conflicts with the added
legitimacy of having fought down the Soviet Union.
Having prevailed in this conflict.
And, having been radicalized in the intellectual climate of this,
of these movements.
And that is, I cannot overemphasize this point.
The type of Islam that is now being propagated is among the most narrow minded
and ... among the most, extreme, almost xenophobic notions of Islam conceivable.
And it's exactly that notion of Islam that
these foreign fighters now carry with them, and
re-import into their own local conflicts, or onto some other conflicts.
We see this most dramatically with respect to the Algerian Civil War, but also
equally dramatic in Chechnya and Dagestan. To somewhat
less extent in Bosnia. To conclude
this sorry story, the Soviet Union, certainly after the arrival
of Secretary General Gorbachev wants to extricate itself from this conflict.
And so we have in 89, you have the Geneva accords
in which the United States and the Soviet Union agree to mutually disengage.
But also both sides agreed that they will continue
to support their respective allies in something that the the
Americans called positive symmetry.
So they will match the support that
the Soviet Union gives to the central government.
The result of this war is that the cities remain largely unharmed, as I mentioned.
But we see a massive fragmentation of Afghanistan
along ethnic lines otherwise throughout the countryside.
And that's something that becomes now important
after the Soviets have withdrawn. The other
thing that is important to remember, and it's perhaps somewhat unpopular to say,
so brace yourself.
The despite the romantic presentation of this conflict through
out the as long as it lasted, particularly in
the Western press, as the nationalist uprising
of a poor, subjugated people against this dominant foreign aggressor.
What we're actually seeing is,
if you try to take a more, a broader
historical view, you have the forces of
state-sponsored modernity. You know, a modernizing project.
Or by done is socialist precursors. Fighting against
an atavistic anti-modern movement.
And the United States, here you see
President Reagan with representatives of the mujahideen leaders.
And there in the official caption of the time were presented as freedom fighters.
I think Rasanayagam
assessment here is correct.
I'm quoting, he says, the United States thus
found itself on the side of the Islamic fundamentalists,
actively promoted by its Pakistani ally and confronted by
a pragmatic, unconciliatory Iran. End of quote.
The United States is now, continues to support extremist,
particularly Pashuton groups, selected and supported
by Pakistani ally. While their relatively moderate
Shiite groups that are supported by Iran are on the
the other side. And both, both of these groups have
been fighting the modernist tendencies of the, the Afghan government.
So we see here a legacy that continues today because, after all
when the United States found itself now in charge of administrating or
helping to create an administration in Afghanistan after 2001.
It had to set out doing many of the things that the Soviets were trying to do.
Namely building state institutions, delivering services, creating a
semblance of modernity in an rural, underdeveloped
society. And it's exactly the forces
that they had allied themselves with that are
dramatically, fundamentally opposed to that vision of modernity.
So that's one of the things to remember.
What we see the other impact now of the withdrawal of Soviet forces is the
now, the Soviet Union has agreed in the Geneva course to withdraw its troops.
Here we see Lieutenant Gen. Gromov
the commander of the Soviet troops, and that is
one of the last columns of departing Soviet tanks.
And Gromov was literally the last who left.
But to the surprise of everybody, Najibullah holds out,
manages to survive for three extra years in Kabul.
His government does not fall immediately, so he stays in Kabul in power until 92.
And it's, in this period when they still, the mujahideen fighters are
fighting the central government, where we still see a semblance of unity among them.
And then once they ultimately take Kabul,
we have the Peshawar agreement of April 92.
Brokered by Pakistan, by the Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
And here we see a picture from that negotiation.
You see in the middle, Ahmad Shah Massoud and next to him Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
And they agree on a power sharing between the mujahideen forces.
But as all of you know, this is not what comes to pass.
We have now, and that is ultimately the hidden
story behind the Jihad that is fought. We have ultimately criminal
elements or personal ambitious elements that have
used the opportunities given by the war, the war economy that have created.
To both to enrich themselves and to exert power over their respective communities.
And they are now very much unwilling to give up that power.
So the ambition,
and the criminal energy to sustain the flow of funds, and
the economic conditions that they have come
to rely on during the years of conflict.
That now prevents the mujahideen forces
from actually agreeing on a common government.
And what you see now from 92 til 96, you see an orgy
of violence. Civil war of
unprecedented viciousness that is now actually fought out in the cities.
So, all the destruction that we see in Afghanistan today in the cities has
been brought about by the mujahideen forces
themselves, by Afghans themselves, in a civil war.
It's not a destruction that was brought by an outsider.
But that is an equally fascinating and equally sorry
story that we will explore in the next video.
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