War In Afghanistan

The Afghanistan Civil War from the late 1970's to the present day isn't well know, but is a good source for finding modern day warfare, especially Soviet vehicles and equipment. I didn't really know much about this war before I started this page, but as I researched it more I became more interested in it. It has a lot of twists and turns in its history. You may be wondering why it is on M.R.C.C. Well, I placed it here since there really wasn't a war that can represent 1980's technology. The rebels in this war mainly used U.S. supplied equipment while the government used Soviet equipment. There is a lot more conflict in Afghanistan's history, but I figured this is the most active conflict it has experience in the 20th Century.

In April 1978, after Muhammad Daud, prime minister of Afghanistan, launched a crackdown against the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), leftist military officers overthrew him. PDPA leader Noor Muhammad Taraki became president. Taraki and his lieutenant Hafizullah Amin, both members of the Khalq faction, purged many Parcham leaders. Taraki announced a sweeping revolutionary program, including land reform, the emancipation of women, and a campaign against illiteracy. Late in 1978 Islamic traditionalists and ethnic leaders who objected to rapid social change began an armed revolt. By the summer of 1979 the rebels controlled much of the Afghan countryside. In September Taraki was deposed and later killed. Amin, his successor, tried vigorously to suppress the rebellion and resisted Soviet efforts to make him moderate his policies. The government's position deteriorated, however, and on December 25, 1979, Soviet forces invaded. They quickly won control of Kabul and other important centers. The Soviets executed Amin on December 27 and Babrak Karmal, leader of PDPA's Parcham faction, was installed as president.

Karmal denounced Amin's repressive policies and promised to combine social and economic reform with respect for Islam and for Afghan traditions. But the government, dependent on Soviet military forces, was unpopular, and the rebellion intensified. During the next few years about 3 million war refugees fled to Pakistan and 1.5 million fled to Iran. Many refugees also moved from the countryside to Kabul. The antigovernment guerrilla forces included dozens of factions. They operated from bases around Peshawar, Pakistan, and, to a lesser extent, in Iran. They were sustained by weapons and money from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China. By the mid-1980s the United States was spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to aid Afghan rebels based in Pakistan.

During the 1980s Soviet forces increasingly bore the brunt of the fighting. By 1986 about 118,000 Soviet troops and 50,000 Afghan government troops were facing perhaps 130,000 guerrillas. Although the Soviet troops used modern equipment, including tanks and bombers, the guerrillas were also well armed, and they had local support and operated more effectively in familiar mountainous terrain. In 1986 the United States began supplying the rebels with Stinger missiles able to shoot down Soviet armored helicopters.

The effects of the war on Afghanistan were devastating. Half of the population was displaced inside the country, forced to migrate outside the country, wounded, or killed. Estimates of combat fatalities range between 700,000 and 1.3 million people. With the school system largely destroyed, industrialization severely restricted, and large irrigation projects badly damaged, the economy of the country was crippled. Despite some negative reaction, the presence of so many refugees in neighboring Pakistan and Iran actually improved Afghan relations with those countries. In addition, many of the refugees improved their lives considerably by leaving Afghanistan and the dangers of war therein. Because the majority of the refugees were religious, their fellow Muslims in Iran and Pakistan accepted them, even while the Iranian and Pakistani governments were striving to bring about the fall of the Communist regime in Kabul.

In May 1986 Muhammad Najibullah, a member of the Parcham faction who had headed the Afghan secret police, replaced Karmal as PDPA leader. In November 1987 Najibullah was elected president.

When Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader in 1985, he gave high priority to getting Soviet troops out of the costly, unpopular, unwinnable war in Afghanistan. In May 1988 Afghanistan, Pakistan, the USSR, and the United States signed agreements providing for an end to foreign intervention in Afghanistan, and the USSR began withdrawing its forces. The Soviet withdrawal was completed in February 1989.

The rebels, who did not sign the agreement concerning the Soviet withdrawal, maintained their fight against the Afghanistan central government with weapons that they continued to get from the United States via Pakistan. They rejected offers from Najibullah to make peace and share power, and refused to consider participating in any national government that included Communists. Thus the civil war continued. The United States and Pakistani sponsors prompted the Peshawar-based rebels to besiege Jalalabad, a strong point for Najibullah in southern Afghanistan. After months of fighting, however, the Afghan government scored a clear victory. A March 1990 coup attempt also failed to bring down Najibullah. He continued to receive Soviet food, fuel, and weapons to help maintain his control. However, rebels persisted in terrorizing the civilian population by rocket bombardment of Kabul and other cities. Finally in late 1991 the USSR and the United States signed an agreement to end military aid to the Kabul government and to the rebels.

In 1992 as the resistance closed in on Kabul, the Najibullah government fell and the Peshawar groups joined forces with General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek, and Ahmad Shah Massoud, a Tajik, in the north and central mountains to assume control in Kabul. As a result, Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, became interim president from July through December 1992, and took office as full president in January 1993. A strong attempt was made to keep the Pashtun leaders, who traditionally held the power in Afghanistan, out of the most important government positions. Kabul was besieged beginning in 1992, first by various mujahideen factions and then by the Pashtun-dominated Taliban, who sought to reestablish Pashtun dominance in the capital.

The Taliban emerged in the fall of 1994 as a faction of guerrilla soldiers who identified themselves as religious students. The movement started in the south and worked its way toward Herat in the northwest and Kabul in the east. It made outstanding military gains using armor, heavy rocket artillery, and helicopters against government forces. The Taliban said that their mission was to disarm the county's warring factions and to impose their strictly orthodox version of Islamic law. Some experts suspect the Pakistani government of supporting the Pashtun-dominated Taliban, in order to keep the combat within Afghanistan and out of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, which is a major part of the Pashtun homeland.

The term of Rabbani's government expired in December 1994, but he continued to hold office amidst the chaos of the civil war. Factional fighting since the beginning of January 1994 kept government officers from actually occupying ministries and discharging government responsibilities. Most cities outside of Kabul were administered by former resistance commanders and their shuras. In June 1996 Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had resigned as prime minister in 1994 to launch a military offensive against forces loyal to Rabbani, again assumed the post, this time to help Rabbani's government fight the Taliban threat. Despite their efforts, the Taliban took Kabul in September 1996. Rabbani and Hekmatyar fled north, joining other factions in an opposition alliance against the Taliban. In 1997 the opposition coalition took the name United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan and appointed Dostum as chief military commander. By the late 1990s the Taliban controlled almost all of Afghanistan, although most other countries had not recognized the group as the legitimate government of the Afghan state.

In 1998, after terrorist bombings struck U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the United States launched cruise missiles at alleged terrorist training camps in eastern Afghanistan. The camps were reportedly connected to an international terrorist ring allegedly run by Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi Arabian named by U.S. officials as the mastermind behind the embassy bombings.

In early 1999 a United Nations diplomatic initiative produced an agreement among Afghanistan's warring factions. The accord called for a permanent cease-fire and a shared government. However, fighting erupted again almost immediately, and plans for further talks were delayed.