Historical context is, for some, an inconvenience. So too is it something primarily disregarded by those who adhere to beliefs that it contradicts. When examining context it is crucial to also examine complicity, as to disregard it is to disregard history in favour of invention.

US covert participation with regards to aiding various factions in Afghanistan in the 1980’s against the Soviets provides an example of how context is currently and routinely disregarded. It’s no secret that the United States aided a variety of Afghan groups in the 80’s through intermediaries such as the Saudis and Pakistanis, nor is it a secret that the promotion of their aid was laden with propaganda, often focusing on those being aided as ‘freedom fighters’. What was not examined was the ideologies of the groups being aided, nor how those ideologies would impact Afghanistan once the war ended.

The Communist Coup Of 1978

In 1978 a coup removed Mohammed Daoud Khan from power, who was killed the following day on April 28th. On May 1st, The Communist People’s Democratic Party, or PDPA, took power and Nur Mohammed Taraki assumed the Presidency.

In the decade prior to the coup, the Soviet Union had worked diligently to mend grievances between two primary rival factions within the PDPA which had split the party in 1967. The first, led by Nur Mohammed Taraki, was the Khalq faction. The second, the Parcham faction, was led by Babrak Karmal.

The coup that removed Khan, referred to by those that planned and initiated it as The Saur Revolution, was almost entirely achieved by the Khalq, and purportedly initiated by Hafizullah Amin who was, at the time, under house arrest. The Khalq faction’s predominance in the execution of the coup led to its eventual control over the armed forces, placing it in a position of power with regards to the formation of the new government. The irony of the coup was that Mohammed Daoud Khan believed the Parcham faction to be the greater threat, as members of it had connections to senior members within his government.

During the period in which the Taraki-Amin government ruled, not only was there a purging of the Parcham from the government – Karmal himself was sent to Czechoslovakia to act as ambassador and other high ranking members of the Parcham faction were sent out of the county - but over 10,000 of Afghanistan’s ruling elite were eliminated and some 27,000 ‘political prisoners’ were executed between the spring of 1978 and the winter of 1979 at Pul-i-Charki prison just east of Kabul. As one might expect, the political initiatives of the government, which itself had become steadily more radicalized, were also disastrous, ones which would ultimately lead to schisms between the government and the village mullahs and headmen who refused to adhere to the government’s secularization and modernization of the country’s highly religious rural areas.

The Soviet Invasion Of Afghanistan

In early December of 1978, the PDPA government and the Soviet Union signed a friendship treaty, one which would ultimately be leaned on as context for the invasion of the country by Soviet Forces. The reason for the agreement was quite simple - the PDPA government had seen an increase in uprisings against its authority. Significant numbers of Afghans had started to enter Pakistan and begin organizing a resistance movement. Though their immediate goal was one of conjoined similarity – the removal of the PDPA – their further agendas were, in fact, quite dissimilar. It would be these fighters that the Western world would be told were fighting for democracy, which was, in reality, the furthest thing from the truth.

In the winter of 1979 the US ambassador to Afghanistan was taken hostage by Islamists posing as policemen who then demanded the release of two Islamic militant prisoners. He was held captive at the Kabul Hotel, which was quickly surrounded by Afghan forces and Soviet advisors. After negotiations failed, an exchange of gunfire ensued in which the ambassador, Adolph Dubs, was killed. Following the incident, the United States chose not appoint a replacement.

Then, in the spring of 1979, an entire division of Afghan infantry in Herat under the command of Ismail Khan mutinied in support of Shi’ite Muslim opposition to the government and killed some 100 Soviet advisors and their families living in the city. Because of this, Herat was then bombed, resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians, and was eventually retaken by Afghan forces.

The uprising in Herat eventually led to Taraki’s formal request for Soviet ground forces to help maintain his government’s control of the country. The Soviets declined the request, believing that their presence would only make matters worse, though did supply Taraki with gunships piloted and serviced by Soviets crews, some 500 military advisors, and 700 paratroopers disguised as technicians to secure Kabul’s airport. Taraki’s government also received considerable food aid from the Soviets as well.

Given the declination of their government’s control of the country, infighting within Khalq began in earnest. In the fall of 1979, members loyal to Taraki made several attempts to assassinate Amin. Ironically, it would be Taraki that was eventually assassinated, leaving Amin in control of the country.

Amin briefly attempted to swing his philosophy to amend past conflicts with the Islamic community in Afghanistan. He even went so far as to claim that the Saur Revolution was based on the principles of Islam, a tactic that failed to win him support amongst those that had not forgotten the harsh actions taken by the PDPA in the past. During this period, Amin also began systematically eliminating his opponents, many of whom were Soviet sympathizers. Unlike Taraki, Amin’s loyalty was seen by the KGB as a rouse, as he was simultaneously seeking to open diplomatic channels with Pakistan and others. Thus, the Soviets, who felt that Amin’s governance would be repressive and counter to their interests, decided that he should be removed from power.

On December 24th, 1979, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan by way of a massive airlift of three divisions into Kabul. Two days later they had secured Kabul, eliminating Amin and those loyal to him within the Afghan army. They then installed Babrak Karmal, the exiled Parcham leader, as the new head of State. Unfortunately, as had always been the case since the radicalization of the PDPA under Taraki and Amin, Karmal’s government was plagued by a series of seemingly unsolvable problems, the severest of which was that despite the fact that the Parcham had been widely persecuted by the Khalq, their ideology was no longer one with which disenfranchised Afghans identified with.

Freedom Fighters And The Miscalculation Of Their Pay Masters

Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, one which was defended under the auspices of the Brezhnev Doctrine as being justifiable because the Soviet Union was merely coming to the aid of a fellow socialist nation, the West’s reaction was one of obvious condemnation. The Carter administration redefined Afghanistan as the front line in the global war against Communism (sound familiar?), which led to the alteration of the position taken by the United States regarding Pakistan, whose economic aid had been revoked because of their nuclear program. The US thus offered a new economic and military assistance deal to Pakistan if it agreed to act as a conduit between the United States and the Mujahideen. This initial offer was refused, though an increased offer made by the new Reagan administration was eventually accepted, and concerns over their nuclear program were silenced. Along with the United States, similar offers of aid came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and others.

During the war against the Soviets, the Pakistani ISI was primarily used as a conduit with which to move money and materials to a variety of groups that comprised the resistance. While the resistance movement had been founded in Pakistan predominantly by Afghans, such as the Hizb-e-Islami and Ittehad-i-Islami which both rose out of Burhanuddin Rabbani’s Jamiat-i-Islami movement, it eventually grew to include foreign fighters from around the Islamic world, including the likes of Osama Bin Laden and others. Also of significance were the northern Tajik forces commanded by Ahmad Shah Massoud, which would later become known as The Northern Alliance.

In the case of Osama Bin Laden, he was urged to by his once teacher, Abdullah Azzam, to relocate to the Pakistani border city of Peshawar in 1979 from which to assist in the struggle. Peshawar, located no more than 15 miles from the Khyber Pass, provided them a location from which to funnel foreign fighters and military support into Afghanistan. By 1984, the two had founded Maktab al-Khadama, an organization which focused on providing money, arms, and foreign fighters to aid in the war effort. The access to materials came largely by way of the ISI, but the trail backwards primarily led through the Saudis to the CIA, who spent billions of dollars funding the Mujahideen throughout the 80’s.

The complexities of the various groups that fought the Soviets during the 80’s somehow escaped those that supported them. To most it was simply about funding those that were fighting the Soviets; delving into their ideologies or plans with regards to Afghanistan after the fact was not something commonly entertained, nor were the tribal complexities of the country and the power vacuum that could very well occur after the fall of the Soviet backed PDPA government. It must also not be overlooked that those who fought the Soviets were cast in the West as freedom fighters, individuals seeking a democratic Afghanistan, not religiously motivated warriors bent on ridding the country of foreign invaders and their henchmen, and certainly not ones that favoured the introduction of Sharia Law into Afghan society.

The political vacuum created at the end of the war was, in no small part, a very real byproduct of insular, Cold War thinking. It left the country in a state of confusion that eventually resulted in a civil war between those that had been victorious in defeating the Soviets. One of the factions to arise during that period was the Taliban, who, in 1997, were recognized by the government of Pakistan as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan.