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Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.

On 11 September 2001, two strong men from the ends of the earth stood face to face— President of the United States George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Although they had never met, both stood at the epicenter of one of the most cataclysmic events ever to strike the United States. These two men embodied the clash between Western liberalism and eastern Islamic fundamentalism. One culture valued freedom, equal rights, and religious tolerance. The other culture epitomized hatred—especially for the United States and Israel—suppression of women, demonization of any religion other than Islam, and strict adherence to a radical form of Islam that embraced terrorism and equated death in the jihad (holy war) against perceived enemies as glorious martyrdom. Although Americans had encountered Muslim fanaticism in 1993 with the bombing at the World Trade Center and again in 1998 when bin Laden terrorists attacked U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, most failed to understand the vicious nature of a man who viewed “hostility towards America [as] a religious duty.” On that September morning, the extent of that hostility was brought home to millions of Americans in a flaming shower of glass, metal, and death.

Figure 1. Regional map and selected cities in the country.

Even after the events of 1993 and 1998, Afghanistan had little relevance to most Americans as they went about their daily lives. What was unfolding there, however, suddenly would dominate the news, the stock market, the airlines, and the very security of the United States. Only soldiers, diplomats, historians, and oil pipeline executives expressed any interest in or knowledge of that far-away Third-World country. Few Americans understood why the United States would be drawn into a conflict with religious overtones that seemed so distant and so confusing. While the United States was not at war with Afghanistan and had no interest in attacking, occupying, or intervening in that country, al-Qaeda, with the support of the Taliban, saw the world differently.

To better understand this most recent war in Afghanistan, a summarized history of the region is provided. What should become very apparent are three constants: perpetual internal fighting between tribal ethnic groups, the dominance of Islam in society, and intervention by external actors using this discord to achieve influence in the country. Afghan leaders, in turn, have sought to take advantage of power plays, whether they were made by regional actors or international superpowers engaged in Cold War or more powerful warlords. To Westerners, internal alliances seem to “shift with the wind.” The limited number of large cities makes them critical control points in the country. The dominant ethnic group has controlled the population centers. Thus, the significance of their capture or control in 2001 can be related to past wars and internal tribal fighting. Mountains, among the highest in the world, have always dictated the natural flow of traffic in and out of this landlocked country. Throughout this story, historical references will be made to show links between the present war and past conflicts.

Foreign invasion is an integral part of Afghanistan’s history. Alexander the Great invaded the region between 330 and 327 A.D. In the seventh century, Arab Muslims, after conquering Iran, moved east and reached Kandahar around 700 A.D. By 715, Mohammad Bin Oasim had overrun the entire area and begun to convert the populace to Sunni Islam. From the Ghaznavid capital at Ghazni, Yamin ad-Dawlah Mahmud, of Turkish descent, led his military forces through Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of India during the first half of the 10th century. His conquests assured the domination of Sunni Islam throughout the region. Various Turkish rulers would rule Afghanistan until 1221 when, from the North, Genghis Khan crossed into presentday Afghanistan and destroyed the city of Balkh. Fifty years later Marco Polo would comment on the ruins of the town. Although his Mongol horde was halted just north of Kabul, Genghis Khan quickly regrouped and proceeded to devastate the area. The destruction was so complete that one historian has referred to Genghis Khan as “the atom bomb of his day.” But what the Mongols could not destroy was Islam, and by 1295, the descendants of Genghis Khan were Muslim.

In the late 1300s, the warrior Tamerlane (Timur the Lame) moved south from his home near Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan to incorporate Afghanistan into his Timurid Empire. Tamerlane’s interest in conquest rather than administration prompted the empire’s dissolution after his death in 1405. Although his immediate successors established Herat as a cultural center, they were unable to control the competition for power. For the next three centuries, turmoil characterized what would become Afghanistan. Babur (Zahiruddin Muhammad), a descendant of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, founded the Moghul Dynasty that captured Kabul in 1504 and extended his rule throughout India. Simultaneously, the Persian Safavid Empire seized territory around Kandahar, and Uzbeks attempted to gain control over Herat. Native Pashtun tribes attacked what they perceived to be foreign invaders, but disunity precluded large gains. Competition, lack of unity, and weakness were ingredients that enabled the Persian, Nadir Shar, to control the region with military might.

Figure 2. Regional location map and neighboring countries.

Seeking to overthrow the weak Persian ruler and eliminate the Turks from Persia, Nadir embarked on a successful campaign that not only recovered land lost to Turkey but also dealt with his Pashtun enemies at Herat, Farah, and Kandahar. Because Nadir admired the Pashtun fighting skills, he relocated them in the southwestern part of Afghanistan, the center of their power to this day. His suspicion of those closest led many to be executed, and his son was blinded before Nadir was assassinated in 1747.

Nadir had incorporated into his army a body of cavalry commanded by Ahmad Shah, a Pashtun. After Nadir’s death, Ahmad and his men fled the Persian camp, stealing the treasury that Nadir had used to bribe potential enemies. They arrived at Kandahar where a loya jirga (council) convened to select a tribal leader. Undoubtedly, Ahmad Shah’s powerful cavalry force influenced the loya jirga’s decision. Ahmad Shah, as the leader of the most powerful Pashtun tribe, became Ahmad Shah Durrani (Pearl of Pearls) and quickly seized Ghazni and Kabul. After military expeditions into India, Ahmad returned to quell revolts in Herat and southwest Pakistan. Then, a difficulty that would plague Afghanistan into the 21st century surfaced. “No Pashtun likes to be ruled by another,” observed historian Louis Dupree, “particularly someone from another tribe, subtribe, or section.” By 1752, Ahmad had subdued the northern regions surrounding Konduz, Khanabad, Balkh, and Bamian to bring the Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, and Hazara tribesmen under his control. While he had succeeded in uniting the numerous regional tribes, their loyalty “was not transferred from their own leaders and kin to the concept of nation.” Nevertheless, after his death in 1773, Ahmad Shah Durrani was called Ahmad Shah Baba, the father of Afghanistan, Baba being “father.” By 1800, however, tribal rivalries had plunged the once-united country into civil war, and with civil war came foreign intervention.

The 19th century was the great period of empire for England, France, and Russia when all competed in what Rudyard Kipling described as “the Great Game” in his epic, Kim. With imperialism and power expansion as the guiding principles, each empire sought to dominate and influence the Indian subcontinent. Since the 1600s, England and France had competed for India’s lucrative commerce. That competition quickly turned political. By 1763, British influence was dominant. While Napoleon Bonaparte’s dreams of using Persia to counter British and Russian influence in East Asia died at Waterloo in 1815, the czarist dream of a warm-water port found new life. The Russian defeat of a Persian army in 1807 prompted a defense treaty between the British and Shah Shuja Mirza, the Afghan ruler in Kabul, in 1809 and with the Persians in 1814. Suspicious of Afghan intentions toward India, the British later stationed a sizable force in northwest India.

Following the overthrow of Shah Shuja in 1809 and his successor in 1818, Afghanistan disintegrated into tribal warfare. Different factions controlled the population centers of Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat as well as the Kashmir and Peshawar regions. Dost Mohammad Khan eventually achieved a measure of dominance in 1826 in the areas of Kabul and Ghazni. Balkh was lost to northern invaders, and Shuja, even with British assistance, failed to regain Kandahar in 1833. In the meantime, the Russians had been exerting influence on the Persians. In 1837, a Persian army with Russian officers accompanying it advanced on Herat. The Persian advance and the presence of a Russian commercial agent in Kabul caused Great Britain to demand that Dost Mohammad renounce contacts with Persia and Russia, expel the Russian agent from Kabul, and recognize the Indian Sikh conquest of Peshawar. When a strongly worded British note made the capture of Herat into a threat to India, the Persian army was withdrawn and the Russian agent recalled. The Governor General of India, Lord Auckland, was determined that Shuja, whom he believed he could control, should rule in Kabul and Kandahar. The “Great Game” overshadowed the diplomatic and military maneuvering between Russia and Britain where Afghanistan was the playing field.

On 26 April 1839, an invading British army occupied Kandahar, took Ghazni on 22 July, and reached Kabul on 6 August. When Dost Mohammad fled, the British installed Shuja on the throne. British soldiers moved to garrisoned Bamian, Jalalabad, and Charikar. An uneasy peace settled upon a region ruled by an unpopular Afghan puppet supported by English bayonets. The remainder of the country was controlled by tribal leaders, mostly Pashtun.

British envoy William Macnaghten unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate with the other Afghan leaders to form alliances with Shah Shuja who remained in power only while the British occupied the country. Macnaghten’s murder by Dost Mohammad’s son, coupled with successful Afghan attacks against the British garrison and the diplomatic residency in Kabul, led to the final abandonment of the city in January 1842. Of 16,500 British soldiers, families, Sepoy infantry and cavalry, and camp followers who left together from Kabul, there were only 123 Europeans and about 2,000 Sepoys who survived the Afghan attacks and the harsh winter trek. On 5 April, Shah Shuja was assassinated. The British garrison at Ghazni surrendered, but those at Kandahar and Qalat withdrew safely. Tribal anarchy plagued Afghanistan until Dost Mohammad returned in 1843 to fight 20 years to wrest control of the eastern region from rival warlords.

The Persians took advantage of the chaotic conditions to occupy Herat in October 1856. When the British declared war, the Persians withdrew. It would not be until Herat was captured by Dost Mohammad in 1863 that most of present-day Afghanistan would be consolidated under his control. In the meantime, concerned that British intervention in Afghanistan threatened their interests, the Russians steadily pushed southward, reaching the Amu Darya River in 1869, the present-day border between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Four years later, in 1873, an Anglo-Russian Convention established the Amu Darya as the boundary between Afghanistan and Russia.

Following the cycle of Afghan strongmen, warfare erupted throughout the country when Dost Mohammad died in 1863. For six years his sons fought a fratricidal war until Sher Ali Khan succeeded in becoming ruler in Kabul. Again, the Persians took advantage of the family discord to occupy southeastern Afghanistan. Great Britain had long been concerned about any Russian expansion toward the Mediterranean. While the Crimean War of 1853 led to limits being placed on Russian expansion into Europe and Turkey, the British became alarmed by subsequent Russo-Turkish wars and Russian intentions. The Treaty of San Stefano that ended the war was viewed so unfavorably by Great Britain that Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli threatened Russia with war if it were not revised. Fortunately, the 1878 Congress of Berlin alleviated British tension, but suspicions of Russian expansion remained strong.

Unfortunately for Afghanistan, the Russians sent an uninvited diplomatic mission in summer 1878 to Kabul. When they were slow to withdraw after formal protest, the British sent forces into Afghanistan in November 1878 to precipitate what is called the Second Anglo- Afghan War. Sher Ali Khan unsuccessfully solicited Russian assistance and died in Mazar-e- Sharif.

The inability of the Afghan tribes to unite against the British and Sher Ali’s death led to the Treaty of Gandamak on 26 May 1879. A disturbing aspect of the fighting had been that the British were unable to distinguish friendly Afghans from enemy tribesmen. Although they had been defeated and the treaty had, in reality, imposed British rule of Afghanistan from Kabul and control of foreign affairs, the Afghan tribes could not be controlled. Native troops from Herat revolted. The British garrison fought desperately in Kabul, and another British force was defeated near Kandahar. British retaliation left more than 1,000 Afghans dead.

This combination of calamities culminated in another British withdrawal, and Abdur Rahman Khan became ruler in Kabul. He ruthlessly put down numerous tribal revolts, forcibly relocated the dissident Pashtuns from the south to the north, relieved tax burdens on non-Pashtuns, named provincial governors without regard to tribal affiliation, and raised an army that would be loyal to him. During his reign, Sir Mortimer Durand crafted the Durand Line to serve as either an international boundary or a demarcation line between Indian and Afghan influence, depending on the views of those nations at any specific time in history. Rather than settling differences, the line became the stimulus for future fighting between Afghanistan and British-controlled India and later between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The British also delineated the Afghan borders with India and China in the extreme northeast part of the country, although the Chinese did not officially recognize the demarcation until 1964. After Abdur Rahman’s death in 1901, Afghanistan enjoyed the first peaceful transfer of power in history. The country was united as never before, and a geographic area to serve as a buffer between Russia and British India had been defined. During the reign of Abdur Rahman’s son, Habibullah, at the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention, Russia conceded that Afghanistan was outside its sphere of influence. Habibullah Khan did not agree to the convention, but the Russians and British imposed it anyway.

As World War I engulfed Europe, the Turks and Germans pressured Habibullah to join them in an attack on British India. Habibullah’s response was to approach the British with an offer. If Great Britain would relinquish control of Afghan foreign policy, he would stall the Central Powers in the region. The threat relieved, British control over Afghan foreign policy continued. Then, Habibullah was mysteriously assassinated—by whom has never been determined.

Although several of Habibullah’s sons and his brother claimed succession, his third son, Amanullah, who controlled the treasury and the army, gained most Afghan tribes’ loyalty. His reign as emir brought significant change to Afghanistan. As British troops withdrew to fight in the Great War, the Afghan tribes began launching small raids against British border posts. Sensing weakness, in May 1918, Amanullah used his army in several attacks. This precipitated the Third Anglo-Afghan War. After the initial setbacks, the British rallied and countered with air attacks against Kabul and Jalalabad. After a month of fighting, negotiations were sought. The Treaty of Rawalpindi, signed 8 August 1919, ended Great Britain’s 40-year control of Afghan foreign policy but did not stop tribal attacks on British border posts.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Reds had brutally oppressed Muslims during their consolidation of power in the southern regions. Amanullah wanted to stabilize the situation on his northern frontier and to play off his northern neighbor against the British to his east. In 1921, Russia and Afghanistan signed a Treaty of Friendship—the first treaty signed by the Afghans since regaining control of their foreign policy. The Soviets considered the treaty a diplomatic strike against a European power that opposed the rise of a communist state. The treaty provided the Kabul government with money, airplanes, and technicians. Telephone lines were established between Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif as well as between Herat and Kandahar. Despite the treaty, Soviet troops occupied an island in the Amu Darya River in 1925, forcing Afghan forces to withdraw. The issue was settled peacefully by a Pact of Neutrality and Nonaggression, recognizing the borders as previously established, affirming nonaggression, and resolving that neither would become involved in the internal affairs of the other. The “Great Game” continued as the British responded with an ambiguous treaty with Afghanistan that failed to resolve the disputes over the status of Pashtun people sitting astride the Afghan- Indian border. However, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs declared that Afghanistan was “within the British sphere of political influence.”

Emir Amanullah kept a wary eye on the Soviets while twisting the British lion’s tail with his anti-Great Britain speeches at public events that English diplomats attended. While walking the diplomatic tightrope between the two regional powers, Amanullah also dealt with the Afghan tribal leaders who saw their power being eroded. Revolts continued to be a common response as Pashtun leaders near Khowst rebelled against his reforms. The British and the Afghans blamed each other for stirring rebellion, but as Afghan historian Louis Dupree observed, “In the frontier areas trouble does not need to be stirred up; it is constantly whirling in the air waiting to light.”

Further alienating the traditional tribesmen were Amanullah’s social reforms. Intent on bringing the country into the modern era, he sought to impose education for women, to abolish the requirement for women to be veiled, to eliminate government subsidies for tribal chiefs, and to reform the army. Religious leaders declared many of his reform ideas to be anti-Islamic and pointed to photographs of Amanullah’s wife, regarded as Afghanistan’s queen, taken during their European tour, unveiled and with bare shoulders. As the reforms posed threats to both religious leaders and tribal chiefs, revolt became widespread. In January 1929, Amanullah abdicated. Following another period of tribal warfare, a loya jirga (grand council) proclaimed one who advocated reasonable reforms to be emir. Nevertheless, he was assassinated in 1933.

Muhammad Zahir Shah became king in 1933 and reigned until 1973. Afghanistan joined the League of Nations and received official diplomatic recognition from the United States in 1934. Being very aware of the “Great Game” and distrustful of Russia and Great Britain, Zahir Shah turned to Germany for technical and economic assistance. Lufthansa scheduled regular flights between Kabul and Berlin. The United States acquired oil exploration rights in Afghanistan but relinquished them as Europe became embroiled in World War II. Except for some minor frontier skirmishes, Afghanistan, which declared its neutrality on 17 August 1940, remained relatively at peace while much of the world was engulfed in war. Two significant regional postwar political changes that impacted Afghanistan heavily were Indian independence and the separation of Muslim Pakistan from Hindu India. Vastly separated into an eastern and a western Pakistan, the newly created country refused to adjust the Durand Line of 1893. Thus, the Pashtun region was divided between West Pakistan and its northern Muslim neighbor. In retaliation for cross-border attacks, the Pakistanis cut off oil shipments to Afghanistan in 1950. With the British Empire in the process of collapsing, testy Pakistani relations, and western influence prevailing in Iran, the Soviets seized the opportunity to reestablish friendly relations with Afghanistan.

In need of oil and anxious to obtain money for internal improvements, Zahir Shah looked north. The Soviets gladly provided both. One of the more impressive engineering achievements was a highway with a 2-mile-long tunnel through the Salang Pass about 60 miles northwest of Kabul. Diplomatically, the two nations renewed the 1931 Pact of Neutrality and Nonaggression and signed a major trade agreement in 1956. As Cold War tensions heightened, the United States sought to improve relations throughout the region to counter perceived Soviet expansion. U.S. foreign aid funded an airport in Kandahar and a major irrigation project along the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan; however, military aid was not forthcoming. While Pakistan was invited to join the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) in 1955, Pakistan- Afghanistan differences over the Pashtun region and the level of Soviet aid made membership in the regional defense organization moot. The Soviets were quite willing to provide the desired military aid.

The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) concluded that “Afghanistan is of little or no strategic importance to the United States” and that “it would be desirable for Afghanistan to remain neutral.” The National Security Council adopted a similar position. Officially, then, Afghanistan remained neutral as the United States became more active in the “Great Game.”

Reminiscent of Amanullah’s unsuccessful social reforms to modernize Afghani society were the bold efforts of Prime Minister Daoud Khan to end the isolation of women. In 1959, the wives and daughters of government officials were allowed on a reviewing stand with their faces uncovered. This supposedly violated two Muslim religious traditions—women wearing a veil and women remaining apart from men in public. Before this episode, the Zahir Shah government had sanctioned working without a veil for the stewardesses on Ariana Afghan Airlines because it was impractical. Females were also permitted to work as radio announcers, and young women could work in a pottery factory. These exceptions were nothing compared to the upheaval caused by the women’s public appearance on the reviewing stand.

Mullahs, many of whom were illiterate, protested vehemently, but when challenged to cite specific passages from the Koran to support their position, they could not. While those who spoke openly against the government were arrested, they were soon released. Some recanted their positions; others did not. Two explanations can be given for the mullahs’ views. Some mullahs sincerely believed an Islamic woman played a very minor role in society, which Westerners would consider sexual discrimination. Additionally, any social measure that touched on religion diminished the power of the mullah. Education could lead to serious questioning by the people, and the people might question mullahs who could neither read nor reason.

Politically, the period from 1953 to 1973 was one of tension between liberalism and fundamentalism, nationalism and tribalism, and monarchy and democracy. Islam established by Mohammad Bin Oasim and interpreted by the mullahs had been an inherent part of Afghan society since 715. Daoud’s attempts to wrench Afghanistan from its feudal state into modernity produced mixed results. Although some women obtained liberties not previously available, they were freedoms generally limited to women in large cities. Modernized infrastructure came only by accepting aid from a nation that had once been a threat. Taxation to support the efforts of a central government caused antigovernment riots in Kandahar. Because Afghanistan had been a country created geographically with little regard for cultural lines, it was constantly plagued with conflicts along its southern border with Pakistan over the artificial boundary that split Pashtuns who considered the dividing line irrelevant. Border crossing closures prompted clashes between nomads seeking to move animals back and forth between grazing areas as they had for centuries and Pakistani border guards who considered such movements to threaten national stability. The Pakistani actions compelled the Afghans to seek economic relief from Russia.

This new development prompted the National Security Council to reassess its position. The decision was made to adopt a more active role in the region: “The United States should try to resolve the Afghan dispute with Pakistan and encourage Afghanistan to minimize its reliance upon the Communist bloc . . . and to look to the United States . . . for military training and assistance.” U.S. government efforts, however, proved to be too little, too late.

In 1963, Prime Minister Daoud, whom many Afghans blamed for Pakistan’s problems, stepped down in a surprise move. Two weeks later, the new prime minister, Muhammad Yousuf, formed a committee to draft a new constitution and sought to resolve differences with Pakistan. Instigated by the Shah of Iran, envoys from Pakistan and Afghanistan met in Tehran, and on 29 May 1963, diplomatic relations were reestablished.

Demonstrating its neutral, nonaligned status, Afghanistan did not seek advice for drafting its new constitution from the United States but instead, sought guidance from France, which had 15 constitutions since 1789. After the document was drafted, the king called for a loya jirga to convene in September 1964 to review it. Elected delegates countrywide attended. This was no small feat since the literacy rate was about 5 percent. Election details were disseminated primarily by radio. After deliberations, the loya jirga submitted the 128-article constitution to the king. On 1 October 1963, Muhammad Zahir Shah approved the document. It declared Afghanistan to be “a constitutional monarchy” having an elected bicameral parliament and that “Islam is the sacred religion.” With no tradition of democracy, only approximately 16 percent of the eligible voters turned out for the first election. Still, four women were elected to the parliament.

For the next decade, Afghanistan vacillated between monarchy and democracy. Political parties were forbidden. Newspapers were allowed but were closely controlled. Parliament was ineffective. The four female members were defeated in the 1969 elections. Drought and famine brought misery to the population. During King Zahir’s visit to Europe in 1973, former Prime Minister Daoud initiated a coup and abolished the monarchy. Within two years, he approved a new constitution that created a one-party government overseen by a president. In an attempt to reduce Soviet influence, President Daoud sought aid from India, Iran, and the United States and removed Russian military advisers from many units. He also improved relations with Pakistan. Daoud’s actions infuriated Communists in Afghanistan. On 27 April 1978, the reactions turned violent as Afghan armored units and MiG-21s attacked the presidential palace. The next day Daoud was killed. Nur Mohammed Taraki became president, and the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan—the Communist Party—took control of the country.

President Taraki’s programs included cleansing Islam of “bad traditions, superstition, and erroneous belief.” He redesigned the Afghan flag, eliminating the color green (the color of Islam), and made the dominant color red to resemble the flag of the Soviet Union. Loan payments, gender equality, female education opportunities, and land reform were dictated by government decrees. The rural villagers considered these Taraki reforms to be anathema because they overturned the traditional ways of social life. Faced by numerous antigovernment uprisings and increased desertions from the army, the president responded by signing a Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighborliness with the Soviet Union and invited Russian military advisers to help suppress the rebels. In February 1979, U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs was kidnapped in Kabul, presumably by a Maoist extremist group, and killed during the rescue attempt.

The U.S. government, absorbed by the Shah of Iran’s overthrow and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini, considered Afghanistan a lower priority. In Herat in March 1979, after rebels killed nearly 100 Soviet advisers and their families, more than 5,000 Afghans died when government forces, equipped with substantial quantities of new Russian weapons and armored vehicles, recaptured the city. Traditional Afghan factional infighting erupted in the Communist Party. President Taraki was murdered on 14 September 1979 by his Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin, who seized power.

Infighting quickly flared into full-scale civil war. Amid a growing apprehension that Russian communists were dominating Afghanistan, the intelligentsia and well to do fled the country. The Afghan armed forces, whose officers had been trained in the Soviet Union, fell apart. Soviet newspaper, Pravda, announced that the Soviet leadership could not “remain indifferent” to a civil war “in direct proximity to us.” The Russians responded by sending an infusion of advisers to shore up the collapsing ground forces and experienced pilots to fly combat missions against the antigovernment rebels. In October 1979, Soviet-advised forces moved into Paktia Province. Rebel forces retreated, but when government troops withdrew, they returned. Shortly afterward, U.S. intelligence reported heightened Soviet military activity as reservists were called up, bridging equipment was centralized, and an army headquarters was established near the Amu Darya River. In early December, a reinforced airborne regiment sent to Bagram earlier quickly moved to secure the Salang Tunnel and Kabul International Airport.

On the night of 27 December 1979, Soviet troops assaulted Darulaman Palace in Kabul and killed President Amin. Soviet leaders attempted to explain their actions using the pretext that “We are responding to an appeal from the Afghan leadership to repel outside aggression.” General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev had invoked Article 51 of the United Nations (UN) charter that guaranteed “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.” Afghan communists claimed that Soviet assistance was necessary to defend themselves against attacks by the United States, Pakistan, and China. Then, in a clumsy attempt to justify their actions, the Soviets proffered former deputy premier Babrak Karmal as the new president. Karmal broadcast a message to the Afghan people on the Radio Kabul frequency that “the torture machine of Amin . . . has been broken” and to declare a jihad “for true democratic justice, as respect for the holy Islamic religion.” The newly touted president did not mention that he was actually broadcasting from Termez, Uzbekistan. During another broadcast, Karmal claimed that he had requested military assistance from the Soviets.

Careful scrutiny of the invasion timetable of events revealed how inept the Soviets were in their attempts to legitimize the heavy-handed actions. The individuals whom the Soviets claimed had elected Karmal were in prison during the supposed election; announcements that first Amin and then later, Karmal had requested intervention contradicted each other; the propaganda apparatus did not explain why Amin—if he had requested military intervention—was killed and replaced by Karmal; and there were no explanations as to why Karmal did not appear in public in Kabul until 1 January 1980. Efforts to portray Amin as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent had no credence based on his supposed request for a massive Soviet invasion.

Russian scholar Robert Baumann writes, “The motives for a large-scale Soviet military intervention were the subject of exhaustive comment and speculation.” Documents released in the 1990s prove that Taraki and Amin did ask for military intervention at least 16 times between 14 April and 17 December 1979. Soviet military advisers in Kabul, however, had advised against such intervention. Although the real reasons for the Soviet intervention may never be known, a 31 December 1979 article in Pravda provided as good an explanation as any to date. The article spoke of holes in the “strategic arc.” The perception that there were holes in Afghanistan that needed to be plugged may explain why the Soviet army’s nightmare began.

Reaction in the U.S. government was outrage. President Jimmy Carter blocked sales of grain and high-technology equipment to Russia and boycotted American participation in the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow. More ominously, he declined to submit the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II (SALT II) to Congress for ratification. Signed in Vienna on 18 June 1979, SALT II would have limited U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear offensive weapons. In his State of the Union Address of 21 January 1980, the president enunciated a sweeping foreign policy declaration that became labeled the “Carter Doctrine.” Specifically alluding to the Soviet invasion, Carter made clear that “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Figure 3. Jimmy Carter.

International reaction was decidedly unfavorable as well. The UN General Assembly voted 104 to 18 to “deplore the recent armed intervention in Afghanistan” and called for the “immediate, unconditional, and total withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan.” Although voting with the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro was concerned about the implications that the invasion had for Cuba’s future sovereignty. Would Cuba be the next object of Soviet military intervention? Iran was pointedly critical of the invasion of its Islamic neighbor.

A history of tensions with Pakistan concerned U.S. government officials. Remembering the 1959 cooperative security agreement, President Carter’s initiative to establish a “regional security framework” that involved Pakistan, the provision of a $400-million aid package that was substantially greater than previous years, and a visit by Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski all raised the level of Soviet hostility toward Afghanistan’s southern neighbor. Concurrent overflights, cross-border incursions, and threats raised concerns about stronger Soviet military action.

The Soviets did not withdraw and soon learned that the Afghans were willing to ignore most ethnic and tribal differences temporarily and unite against a foreign invader. The mullahs’ (religious teachers) call for jihad against the Soviets was presented as a spiritual obligation to the 99-percent Muslim population. To fight and even die in a holy war against Communist kafirs (infidels) was a duty that rallied support, not to support an Afghan central government but to oppose an invading army. The freedom fighters came to be known as the mujahideen—the soldiers of God.

Although united by a military objective, the mujahideen fighting groups could not agree on a common political objective. The Islamic Alliance for the Liberation of Afghanistan, an alliance of six parties created in January 1980, began to fall apart in March. Led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the anti-Western Party of Islam gained prominence in the Kandahar area. Mullah Omar soon joined Hekmatyar, but rather than seeking the company of other factions, the Party of Islam seemed to be more intent on establishing an Islamic theocratic state than in removing the foreign invaders. The Islamic Alliance wanted a country ruled by a loya jirga but with a very clear Islamic focus. By the mid-1980s, the Party of Islam, with a primarily Pashtun membership, had spread its influence into the provinces near Kabul. Although the Party of Islam cooperated with other mujahideen groups, a RAND study’s conclusion was not encouraging: “Many of the political parties seem to be expending most of their energy bickering and fighting each other and are rife with corruption and nepotism. In the opinion of many mujahideen field commanders, the political factions at present represent more of an obstacle to effective resistance than an asset.”

Afghan military forces in Kandahar, Kabul, and Herat had initially opposed the invading 40th Soviet Army, but three battalions in Jalalabad had deserted en masse. By summer 1980, only one-third of the old Afghan army supported the Soviets and their puppet government. Karmal pleaded for an end to “factionalism,” affirming his government’s support of Islam. But he also made it clear that “eternal friendship and solidarity with the Leninist Communist Party of the USSR” was a key tenet of his regime. Factionalism in the Afghan army units was so severe that occasionally elements fired on each other. Defections, desertions, and sabotage destroyed Soviet trust. Somewhat more effective than the army were government militia units created in the tribal areas. By paying off tribal leaders, the government sought to secure a region against rival mujahideen tribes. Occasionally, these efforts backfired when “loyalists” switched sides and took the government-supplied equipment with them.

In January 1980, Soviet forces occupied Farah and Herat to guard against incursions from Iran. A motorized rifle division moved into Mazar-e-Sharif. In March 1980, another motorized rifle division secured control of Konar Province, north of Jalalabad. In June, however, disaster struck when the mujahideen ambushed and annihilated a motorized rifle battalion on the road between Gardez and Khowst. With only a few helicopters in Afghanistan, the Soviet supply convoys were extremely vulnerable. This also meant that attacking or pursuing the mujahideen in mountainous areas was difficult. By mid-1981, the number of helicopters had increased fivefold—from 60 to 300—and by the end of the year, 130 jet fighters were in Afghanistan. Realizing that tanks were largely ineffective in what had become a guerrilla war, Soviet tanks were reduced from nearly 1,000 to 300 that same year.

Figure 4. Soviet tank carcass.

With few exceptions, conventional division- and brigade-size offensive operations were the norm. Many of these were directed at guarding supply routes. Exceptions occurred toward the end of 1980 when heliborne troops conducted raids in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul and in Lowgar Province south of the capital. Still, the Soviets were unable to dominate any region permanently. In the Panjshir, their limited success was due in no small measure to mujahideen leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, “the Lion of the Panjshir,” who organized his troops into defense, mobile strike, and reaction forces. In the vicinity of Herat, resistance units of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan, commanded by Ismail Khan, enjoyed some success. By February 1982, however, Soviet forces had inflicted significant casualties on these guerrilla forces.

Mujahideen leaders, having recognized that their elements could not stand toe to toe with Russian military forces, focused on attacking Soviet residential areas and assassinating officials in Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat. The Soviets often retaliated with brutal efficiency to cleanse the cities and nearby villages of rebel forces and sympathizers. A successful attack on Bagram Air Base in April 1982 that destroyed 23 aircraft prompted a major Soviet offensive into the Panjshir Valley. The mujahideen captured nine tanks and killed 300 to 400 Russian soldiers in this engagement, but the guerrilla and civilian casualties were twice that number. The “Lion of Panjshir,” Ahmad Shah Massoud (war leader of another Party of Islam), withdrew into the mountains. Shortly thereafter, the Soviet military left the valley in a wake of destruction, razing villages, burning crops, and blowing up irrigation systems. Guerrillas in the south, supplied from Pakistan, attacked Soviet garrisons in Khowst and surrounding villages. In the north, kidnapping Soviet technicians in Mazar-e-Sharif triggered large-scale Soviet and Afghan army operations in the region.

Soviet conventional forces faced a major counterinsurgency situation for which they were doctrinally unprepared. The mujahideen did not mass to facilitate destruction by Soviet artillery. The Russians established control in specific areas only as long as large formations maintained an active presence. Once they withdrew, the area reverted to guerrilla control. In essence, the Soviets faced many of the problems that the British had faced previously. Unlike the British, however, the Soviets gained the upper hand with air power. They quickly learned that, although the guerrillas could choose the time and place to ambush convoys, helicopters could put ground forces on the high ground along convoy routes. If the convoys were attacked, the massive firepower of tactical aircraft could be called on the attacking forces. Although limited by terrain, weather, and aircraft performance limits, helicopters were able to deliver supplies to remote garrisons, thus avoiding defiles that channeled ground convoys for ground ambush. In 1983, the Soviet garrisons in Bamian, Ghazni, Gardez, and Khowst were resupplied entirely by airdrops and helicopters. The mujahideen resorted to using conventional ground weapons, like the ZPU-1 and 12.7 millimeter (mm) DshK machine gun, to shoot down 20 helicopters a year. In 1983, the mujahideen first acquired SA-7 (surface-to-air) missiles from Pakistani arms dealers. Three years later they began to receive British Blowpipe antiaircraft missiles.

In 1986, several Congressmen recommended funds to supply the mujahideen with U.S. Stinger antiaircraft missiles. Exactly when the American shipments commenced remains cloudy; they possibly began as early as July 1985 but not later than September 1986. The CIA shipped 300 in 1986 and 700 in 1987. According to CIA officer Vincent Cannistraro, “The Stingers neutralized Soviet air power and marked a strategic turning point in the war.” Soviet aircraft losses averaged one a day for the initial 90 days when Stingers were first employed. In 1987, 270 aircraft were shot down.

The rigidity of Soviet military leaders delayed tactical and systemic changes that could have reduced aircraft and crew member losses. A system that discouraged initiative or deviation from established procedure caused casualties. Initially, pilots stuck to the flight route, even if it meant flying through confirmed enemy air defense zones. All training emphasized a doctrinal approach to flight operations with no room for innovation if situations changed. As one analyst noted, “The learning curve seems to have been quite lengthy.” Rather than gathering the tactical lessons learned in Afghanistan and disseminating them to all units, changes were made based on individual pilot or unit recommendations. Pilots adapted to survive. They flew higher, did more night operations, dropped flares during takeoff and before landing, and learned the value of false helicopter insertions. They also began dropping bombs from higher altitudes, which significantly reduced accuracy. With the greater air defense threat, especially from Stingers and other antiaircraft missiles, Soviet air operations became less frequent and less effective.

In 1983, ground tactical operations shrank to battalion- and regimental-size efforts instead of the previous division-size operations. Part of the rationale behind the smaller-scale operations was a cease-fire in the Panjshir Valley arranged by Massoud. Although this initiative infuriated Hekmatyar (the leader of the original Party of Islam centered about Kandahar), who regarded Massoud’s act as a betrayal, it gave the “Lion of Panjshir” time to rebuild his depleted forces and to reestablish a supply network in the valley. At the same time, the Soviets shifted their forces and gained free use of the highway between Kabul and Konduz. Another part of the rationale was the Soviets’ desire to get more Afghan army units into the battle. This started in fall 1983. Afghan army brigades started fighting the mujahideen in Paktia and Paktia Province. The Russians wanted a strong national Afghan army to provide stability to the country when their forces withdrew. Although the operations in Paktia and Paktia Province showed improvement in effectiveness, the Afghan army could not match the mujahideen on the battlefield.

Mujahideen ground and rocket attacks against Kabul caused renewed Soviet large-scale offensives into the Panjshir and Konar valleys. Over the next several years, bold guerrilla attacks against Soviet and Afghan forces in Khowst, fierce fighting with mujahideen in Kandahar and Herat and the surrounding areas, and the destruction of 20 MiG-21s at Shindand Air Base convinced the Soviets and the Karmal government that a short war with a decisive victory over the guerrillas was not possible. Despite success in several regions, the mujahideen were unable to achieve decisive long-term results either, for several reasons: their inability and/or unwillingness to coordinate activities and operations among themelves; their inability to capitalize on war supply sources in Pakistan; or their inability to get the most from modern technology because of the high illiteracy rate among the Afghans.

The warfare was extremely brutal: both sides killed prisoners, Afghan officials were assassinated, civilians died in terrorist attacks, villages were destroyed, populations were displaced in reprisal, and mines were airdropped by the thousands. At least 5 million Afghans fled to Iran and Pakistan, most settling in refugee camps. Karmal and the Soviets realized that something had to be done quickly to break the developing stalemate in the war.

On 29 March 1985, President Babrak Karmal called for “major socio-political work among the people and the need to raise the social awareness of the masses.” To foster this effort, Babrak wanted the loya jirgas to elect local councils. After the broadcast, the mujahideen threatened to kill anyone who attended a meeting. Having discovered that an imposed military solution had not worked, the Soviets recognized that they needed a different approach—one that would garner support for the government and reduce guerrilla support. Incorporating key religious tenets from the 1964 constitution, the Afghan Revolutionary Council adopted a provisional constitution that guaranteed “respect, observance, and preservation of Islam as a sacred religion.” Seizing on the importance of Islam in Afghanistan, the Soviets and Karmal agreed to establish religious schools and to improve conditions for women. The Afghan president also tried to gain support from the mullahs by providing them with extra food allowances and money to repair existing mosques and to build new ones.

Figure 5. Abandoned MiG at Mazar.

The Russians managed to “retool” this idea by sending 16,000 to 20,000 Afghan children to schools in Warsaw Pact countries to be educated. This blatant effort to indoctrinate Afghan youth caused international outrage. Destroying the bases of support for the mujahideen posed the classic dilemma—identifying the insurgents and isolating them from the general population. The Soviet solution was to drive everyone from the villages, destroy the crops and irrigation systems, and mine the farmland. Although these tactics separated the guerrillas from their support system and deprived the mujahideen of local intelligence, the refugee numbers in the cities greatly increased, as did the insurgents in the urban areas, and resolve in the anti-Soviet factions was strengthened.

Militarily, the Soviet strategy was to employ large garrisons to control the cities and infrastructure, to man series of outposts at critical points along supply routes, and to launch combat operations against the mujahideen from well-protected base camps. Paratrooper, heliborne assault, and Spetsnaz (special operations) units concentrated on securing the high ground along major transportation routes and ambushing mujahideen forces at water points, the favored routes through defiles, and along well-traveled paths or roads. Although successful initially, the guerrillas countered these efforts by doing more reconnaissance. Using local intelligence, they often were able to ambush the ambushers. Over time, the effectiveness of the military counterinsurgency effort diminished considerably.

On 11 March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. During the Communist Party congress in 1986, the new General Secretary characterized Afghanistan as Russia’s “bleeding wound.” Although Communist leaders like Fidel Castro were invited to the congress, President Karmal was conspicuously absent. At a Politburo meeting on 13 November 1986, Gorbachev made it clear that he was dissatisfied with the military situation in Afghanistan, that he had little faith in Karmal, and that the war had to be ended “in the course of one year—at maximum two years.” The military situation could not be fixed quickly, but Karmal was replaceable. After the Central Committee of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan met on 4 May 1987, “the resignation of comrade Babrak Karmal on health grounds” was announced. Mohammad Najibullah, head of the secret police, was named as Karmal’s successor. Gorbachev’s determination to staunch the “bleeding wound” became quite evident when he directed a limited withdrawal of Soviet military forces from Afghanistan on 28 July 1987.

Mujahideen ambushes of convoys, patrols, and outposts and ground and rocket attacks against Soviet garrisons and airfields, however, continued. Fighting was particularly heavy in and around Kandahar. Thousands of mines were laid, the city was devastated, and nearby villages were destroyed. In 1987, the State Department cited Kandahar as “the scene of . . . the heaviest concentration of combat of the war.” When Soviet forces withdrew, the Afghan population was one-eighth of what it had been in 1979.

In a dramatic reversal of the expansionist policy promulgated by his three predecessors— Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantine Chernenko—Gorbachev announced on 8 February 1988 that beginning 15 May, all Soviet forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan in 10 months. On 14 April, in a ceremony in Geneva, Soviet, Afghan, Pakistani, and U.S. representatives signed five accords associated with the Soviet troop withdrawals to be completed by 15 February 1989. The United States and the Soviet Union pledged not to interfere in the internal affairs of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Noticeably absent was representation from the mujahideen.

While some Soviet military advisers remained behind, the 40th Army completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan as prescribed on 15 February 1989. It left behind at least 13,833 dead Soviets. A journalist writing in Izvestiia summed up the difficulties the Soviets had faced in Afghanistan: “The foreign intervention stirred patriotism, and the appearance of ‘infidels’ spawned religious intolerance. On such a field, even a tie would have been miraculous.”

Although the infidels had been expelled, peace did not come to Afghanistan. While President Najibullah was attempting to establish a government in Kabul, the two largest ethnic factions turned on each other. Massoud led the Tajiks and their party, the Jamait-i-Islami (Islamic Society). Abdul Haq led the Pashtun Hizb-i-Islami (Party of Islam). Massoud’s battleground had been the Panjshir Valley, while Haq’s had been Kabul. (Although this Party of Islam had the same name as that of Hekmatyar, the two parties were different.) Pakistan’s president had other concerns.

From relative safety across the border, President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan had long opposed the growing Soviet presence to his north. Zia was concerned about the large number of Pashtun refugees that fled into Pakistan’s frontier provinces. In 1984, he had condoned the creation of the seven-party Islamic Unity of Afghan mujahideen in Peshawar. This multiple-party group included factions led by Hekmatyar, Massoud, and Haq. President Zia and Hekmatyar shared the same fundamentalist Islamic dream of imposing Islamic theocratic governments in the region. With the announced withdrawal of Russian troops, a group of anti-Soviet Afghans who were friendly with Zia formed an Afghan Interim Government (AIG) headed by Sibghatollah Mojadeddi to take control when the Soviet puppet government fell. Even after Zia’s death in a suspicious plane crash 17 August 1988, the U.S. government supported Hekmatyar because he was considered the best alternative to the communist-controlled Najibullah government in Kabul.

The political situation in Afghanistan was very unstable during the Soviet withdrawal. Najibullah had to mediate for tribal factions who were killing each other. Haq was sneaking into Kabul regularly to meet with dissidents he had met during the height of the Soviet occupation. He covered his covert meetings with rocket attacks on the city. In 1989, Pakistan cut all aid to Haq and diverted the resources to Massoud who had a more audacious plan for seizing Kabul. The city, however, would not fall until 1992.

Mujahideen commanded by Abdul Qadir, Haq’s brother, attempted to seize Jalalabad in March 1988. The Soviets left behind tanks, artillery, and ammunition for the Afghan army; left more than 200 aircraft; and supplied $300 million monthly in aid to Najibullah’s government. Infighting among the mujahideen leaders led to uncoordinated attacks, and a combination of tactical ineptness and superior firepower cost the guerrillas more than 3,000 fighters at Jalalabad. That military disaster split the AIG alliance apart. In July, Hekmatyar’s men ambushed a group of Massoud’s fighters. Massoud retaliated, capturing Hekmatyar’s responsible commander and hanging him. This caused Hekmatyar to withdraw from the alliance. While the United States was preparing for war against Iraq, the Soviet Union was disintegrating. The mujahideen forces successfully attacked Afghan government troops at Kandahar, Khowst, and Herat, but they suffered heavy casualties in a direct assault on Kabul. Khowst fell in 1990.

In northern Afghanistan, Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum, who had previously led pro- Soviet forces, united with Najibullah’s Afghan army to fight the mujahideen when the Russians withdrew. However, in February 1992, Dostum changed sides and aligned with Massoud, and their combined forces captured Mazar-e-Sharif. In April 1992, the two forces reached Bagram. Fearing the imminent collapse of his government, Najibullah sought refuge in a UN compound in Kabul where he remained in asylum until September 1996. When Najibullah abandoned the government, the Afghan army disintegrated. Former Afghan army soldiers joined the advance of Dostum and Massoud toward Kabul from the north. Hekmatyar raced toward the capital from the south to beat his rivals to the prize. Although Hekmatyar’s lead elements got into Kabul, the better-organized northern forces forced Hekmatyar’s men from the city and seized control of the government buildings.

Sibghatollah Mojadeddi assumed the presidency, but Burhannudin Rabbani replaced him in June 1992. Rabbani was Tajik, as were Massoud and Ismail Khan who had fought the Russians near Herat. Suddenly, the minority Tajiks, supported by the Uzbek, Dostum, controlled the government and Kabul. Pashtun leader Hekmatyar, after surrounding the city, responded by rocketing the capital. Estimates of Afghans killed in 1993 varied from 2,000 to 30,000.

The expression “you can’t tell the players without a scorecard” aptly fit the alliance shifts among the ethnic groups in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Pashtuns controlled Kandahar, Dostum controlled Bagram, and Dostum and Massoud fought for control of Konduz. Ismail Khan, with support from Iran, controlled Herat. In 1994, Dostum, who had been ignored in all government decisions (possibly because he was Uzbek), aligned with the Pashtun, Hekmatyar, to attack the Tajik Rabbani government. Massoud had an opportunity and seized Konduz. Then he swung about and forced the Dostum-Hekmatyar alliance away from Kabul. As ethnic infighting intensified among the mujahideen warlords, a new group was added to the Afghan scorecard.

In spring 1994, local mujahideen kidnapped and raped two girls near Kandahar. From that brutal crime would spring a popular movement that was directly involved in the events of 11 September 2001 and against whom U.S. and coalition forces would fight in Afghanistan. Mohammad Omar, a talib (religious student) and former member of the Soviet resistance in Kandahar, gathered 30 fellow Taliban (religious students) to free the girls. The rescue was successful, the mujahideen commander was hanged, and the Taliban movement was born. The Taliban goal, based on a 1996 interview with Omar, was to protect women and the poor and to punish those who were guilty of crimes. “We are fighting against Muslims who have gone wrong,” Omar declared. Hamad Karzai, who was named president of Afghanistan in December 2001, initially believed that “the Taliban are good honest people . . . and were my friends from the jihad against the Soviets.” Karzai willingly provided support. The Taliban grew in strength as many young men who had been educated in the refugee madrasas (Islamic schools) of Pakistan joined the cause.

Figure 6. Hamad Karzai.

Pakistan was willing to supply more than just men who were educated in Islamic fundamentalism. President Benazir Bhutto, who had become president after Zia’s death, had two major objectives vis-à-vis Afghanistan. One objective was to find a regime that was friendly to Pakistan—support for Hekmatyar. The other was to establish a secure trade route through Afghanistan to the former Soviet republics. Fighting around Kabul had closed the eastern route north from Peshawar. Bhutto quickly focused on the western route north from Quetta. Pakistani envoys initiated discussions with Ismail Khan and Dostum to allow convoys to use the western highway. But Spin Boldak, a critical border town, was garrisoned by Hekmatyar’s forces. On 12 October 1994, 200 Taliban fighters with Pakistani support defeated the garrison and captured 18,000 rifles and artillery pieces and a large quantity of ammunition. On 29 October, a Pakistani convoy bound for Turkmenistan departed Quetta. Near Kandahar, three local commanders halted the convoy and demanded a cut of the goods. The Pakistanis asked the Taliban to help. On 3 November, Taliban soldiers rescued the convoy, killing one of the local commanders. The Taliban force immediately moved to capture Kandahar. On 5 November 1994, the city was taken, along with tanks, artillery, six MiG-21s, and six helicopters. It was rumored that Pakistani advisers had been involved in the fighting. Many of the Taliban soldiers had been refugees in Pakistan and had been taught a strict interpretation of Islam that required total acceptance of the Koran and advocated eliminating the corrupting influence of the West. By December 1994, Taliban ranks in Kandahar had swollen to 12,000 as the populace embraced the fledgling movement as a better alternative to the corrupt regime. In the midst of these activities, President Bhutto denied any involvement with the Taliban.

Historian Ahmed Rashid, who has studied Afghanistan extensively, described the young men who comprised the Taliban.

These boys were a world apart from the Mujaheddin whom I had got to know during the 1980s—men who could recount their tribal and clan lineages, remembered their abandoned farms and valleys with nostalgia, and recounted legends and stories from Afghan history. These boys were from a generation who had never seen their country at peace. They had no memories of their tribes, their elders, or their neighborhoods. . . . They admired war because it was the only occupation they could possibly adapt to. Their simple belief in a messianic, puritan Islam drummed into them by simple village mullahs was the only prop they could hold on to and which gave their lives some meaning.

These young men had lived in segregated refugee camps, having no contact with women. Fundamentalist mullahs taught them that women would distract them from their service to Allah. Adopting a strict interpretation of the Koran, they locked away the women, forbidding them to participate in normal society. To the Taliban, television, motion pictures, cameras, and music were corruptions that Islamic law forbade. Within days after the Taliban seized Kandahar, the women had disappeared from the streets, and the physical signs of Western influence had been eradicated.

By January 1995, the Taliban had established control of the three provinces that bordered Kandahar and Kandahar Province—Helmand, Zabol, and Oruzgan provinces—through bribery or military power. In a series of lightning moves, the Taliban seized Ghazni and were within 35 miles of Kabul by 2 February. Hekmatyar’s forces around the capital, facing the two armies of Rabbani and Massoud coming from the north, fled east toward Jalalabad when Taliban forces appeared from the south.

Figure 7. Afghan children.

Massoud also had a problem in Kabul. The Shi’a Moslem Hazaras—the minority Shi’a represented 15 percent of the population—held the southern part of the capital and resisted Massoud’s dominance. In March 1995, the “Lion of Panjshir” had launched a large-scale attack against the Hazaras. The commander, Abdul Mazari, sought help from the Taliban. Shortly afterward, he mysteriously was found dead—the possibility that the Taliban pushed Mazari from a helicopter remains unconfirmed. Mazari’s demise angered the Hazaras (19 percent of Afghanistan’s population) and the Shi’a Iran communities. Undeterred, Massoud and his better-trained troops ejected both the Hazaras and Taliban from Kabul by mid-March.

In the meantime, the Taliban seized the western provinces of Nimroz and Farah. At Shindand, they encountered not only Ismail Khan’s forces but also Tajiks airlifted from Kabul by Massoud and Afghan government tactical aircraft. The Taliban lost 3,000 fighters there, and by the end of May, they had been driven back almost to their Kandahar stronghold. Then, from Pakistan, 25,000 new volunteers were sent forward. The Taliban counterattacked; Khan’s army disintegrated; and on 5 September 1995, the Taliban entered Herat. Ismail Khan fled to Iran.

Mullah Omar became head of the Taliban officially on 3 April 1996 when the Kandahar leaders proclaimed him “Commander of the Faithful.” The next day, Mullah Omar appeared in the city wearing Mohammad’s cloak. This act signified that Omar believed that he was not just the leader of the Taliban but of all Muslims as well.

By late spring 1996, the Taliban had regrouped and was showering rockets into Kabul. Massoud, Dostum, and Hekmatyar belatedly joined forces. The Taliban took Jalalabad on 5 September, captured Bagram shortly thereafter, and entered Kabul on 27 September 1996. Rabbani and the three warlords fled. Hekmatyar escaped to Iran. Taliban fighters took Najibullah from the UN compound and tortured and killed him. They hung his body from a light pole for all to see. As they had done in Kandahar and Herat, the Taliban forced women off the streets, eliminated them from the workplace, and imposed the wearing of the burqa. Particularly destructive was banning women from the educational and medical professions. Television, music, movies, games, and kites were prohibited. Men without beards were arrested. Theocratic totalitarianism, under the guise of Islam, was being imposed.

The Taliban pursued Dostum and Massoud as they withdrew. Dostum managed to thwart the Taliban by blocking the Salang Tunnel. On 18 October, Massoud retook Bagram, but by the end of January 1997, a Taliban counterattack recaptured the air base. Then the Taliban shifted focus, and major elements were launched north from Kabul and Herat. General Abdul Malik, one of Dostum’s commanders, defected to the Taliban with 4,000 men and marched toward Mazar-e-Sharif. As Dostum fled to Termez on the Uzbekistan border, Taliban forces took Mazar on 24 May 1997. That proved sufficient for Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan.

The residents of Mazar-e-Sharif, however, did not recognize the Taliban, and on 28 May, they revolted. Six hundred Taliban were killed, another 1,000 were captured, and the 10 top leaders were killed or captured. Malik switched sides again and took control of four northern provinces, killing thousands more Taliban. Massoud, with Russian logistics backing, also counterattacked and, by the end of July 1997, had inflicted heavy losses—about 6,600 Taliban killed, wounded, or captured as well as 250 killed and 550 captured Pakistani fighters. In the aftermath of the success, Rabbani and others formed a United Islamic and National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, later to be called the Northern Alliance. Infighting severely limited its effectiveness.

Massoud’s counteroffensive recaptured Bagram. As they retreated toward Kabul, Taliban forces poisoned wells and destroyed crops. In September, the Taliban in Konduz attacked toward Mazar. Fighting erupted between Malik’s troops and those still loyal to Dostum. As Malik fled to Turkmenistan, Dostum returned from Turkey to drive back the Taliban threat. As Dostum forced the Taliban back toward Konduz, entire villages were destroyed, and their inhabitants were murdered as they withdrew. UN investigators examined the mass graves but in an atmosphere of mutual recriminations could not determine responsibility. The Taliban ordered the UN out of the country, directed the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) doing humanitarian assistance to desist providing aid to women, and arrested journalists for taking photographs of women. This brought humanitarian assistance to the people in Afghanistan to a virtual standstill.

The official U.S. position on the civil war initially was neutral. Economically, a peace held promise for the American-built gas pipeline across Afghanistan to connect Turkmenistan to Pakistan. Despite its antipathy toward Iran, the U.S. government was reluctant to support the anti-Iranian Taliban. Increased evidence of Taliban atrocities led Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to declare in November 1997: “We are opposed to the Taliban because of the opposition to human rights and their despicable treatment of women and children and great lack of respect for human dignity.” U.S. Ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson traveled to Afghanistan in April 1998 to arrange a meeting between the Taliban and UN officials to discuss the plight of women. After Richardson left the country, Omar withdrew his pledge. Within months, diplomacy was shelved as internal fighting flared up again in Afghanistan, and the U.S. government redirected its attention on international terrorism in Africa.

Figure 8. Madeleine Albright.

Figure 9. Bill Richardson.

While Western diplomats argued over courses of action, the anti-Taliban Uzbeks and Hazaras battled each other. The Taliban monitored the progress while further tightening down their reign of oppression. Windows had to be blackened so that women could not be seen from outside. Newborn children could only have names from an approved list. Public executions and open amputations for criminal activity became commonplace. The Taliban closed all NGO offices on 28 July 1998. Then, with financial support from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the Taliban launched a major offensive north from Herat, capturing Mazar-e-Sharif in August and forcing Dostum to flee the country after 1,400 soldiers were killed. Afterward, the Taliban engaged in a “killing frenzy” resulting in at least 6,000 people dead. Thousands more were imprisoned in the Mazar-e-Sharif fortress and in Sheberghan. Prisoners were delivered to the two sites in packed overseas shipping containers. In the midst of the frenzy, Taliban soldiers also killed 13 Iranian diplomats, almost causing a war with Iran. On 13 September, Bamian fell to the Taliban. Five days later, Taliban gunners desecrated the 2,000-year-old Buddha statues carved in the nearby rock cliffs by using them for target practice. (In March 2001, the 36- and 53-meter-tall Buddhas would be totally destroyed to the distress of the world community.) In September 1998, Saudi Arabia withdrew its financial support after Mullah Omar insulted the king’s nephew with regard to Osama bin Laden. The UN Security Council castigated the Taliban on 8 December for their actions (Resolution 1214). Only Pakistan abstained on the resolution. In the meantime, Washington was responding to more terrorist attacks on U.S. government posts and its military serving overseas.

It had taken a string of terrorist bombings in 1998, 1999, and 2000 to promulgate a “fullcourt press” by U.S. intelligence agencies to uncover those responsible. The dust had long since settled on the truck bomb that exploded beneath the World Trade Center in New York City at midday, 26 February 1993, killing six and injuring another 1,000 at a cost of $300 million. Then, the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were destroyed by terrorist bombs on 7 August 1998. The following year, 19 military servicemen died when another explosive-filled truck was detonated alongside the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia. In December 1999, a plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport was foiled. Less than a year later, on 12 October 2000, a bomb-laden terrorist speedboat attacked the USS Cole in Yemen’s harbor, killing 17 American sailors and wounding 39. Intelligence agencies linked Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network to the incidents. In February 1998, before the Khobar Towers bombing, bin Laden had declared: “To kill the Americans and their allies—civilian and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim.” Few were familiar with Osama bin Laden at the time, and those who were tracking him did not realize at the time that his rhetoric had already been transformed into reality.

Bin Laden was born in 1955 or 1957 to a Yemeni father and Saudi Arabian mother. At King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, he pursued both business administration and Islamic studies. Having inherited tremendous wealth, Osama bin Laden began in the early 1980s to finance construction projects for the mujahideen in Afghanistan. He quickly branched into supporting military operations against the Soviets using troops, approximately half of whom were Saudis, who were trained in his camps. After returning to Saudi Arabia, bin Laden was expelled in 1994 for statements against the regime. Bin Laden was next tracked to Khartoum, Sudan, when the Sudanese government asked him to leave in 1996. He settled in Jalalabad until the Taliban threatened the city. Sometime after relocating to Kandahar, Osama bin Laden met Mullah Omar.

From Kandahar on 23 August 1996, bin Laden issued his Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places. Angered that Saudi Arabia let the United States launch attacks against Iraq in 1990, he condemned them for permitting U.S. military forces to be stationed on the Arab peninsula where the holy sites of Mecca and Medina are located, attacked Israel for its “occupation of Palestine,” and declared war against the United States as an occupier of Muslim lands. In 1998, Osama bin Laden formed the al-Qaeda and created an umbrella organization for Islamic extremists called the International Islamic Front for Holy War Against Jews and Crusaders. During an interview with ABC News in December 1998, bin Laden made clear his anti-America views. “Hostility toward America is a religious duty,” he declared, “and we hope to be rewarded for it by God.”

The response to the 7 August 1998 embassy bombings came less than two weeks later when U.S. cruise missiles slammed into terrorist training sites near Khowst and in Sudan on 20 August 1998. Afterward, President Bill Clinton, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and Secretary Albright all emphasized that the United States was not fighting Islam but warned that international terrorists could not “escape the long arm of justice.” Two days later, President Clinton revised Executive Order 12947, issued in 1995, to add Osama bin Laden to a list of terrorists whose assets in the United States would be frozen. The Taliban’s funds had been frozen by Executive Order 13129 on 4 July 1999. Clinton further allowed intelligence agents to use lethal force for self-defense, to preempt possible terrorist attacks, and to focus on bin Laden’s associates. Secretary Cohen ordered two submarines armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles to the Persian Gulf. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Secretary Albright queried Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General (GEN) Henry Shelton about using small Special Forces ground teams to attack bin Laden. News reports said that Shelton thought the idea was naïve. The State Department’s Counterterrorism Reward Program raised the reward for information leading to bin Laden’s arrest to $5 million.

Figure 10. William Cohen.

Figure 11. GEN Henry Shelton.

American actions did not intimidate or deter the Taliban or bin Laden. As the Taliban recruited and rearmed, Massoud recaptured Bamian in April 1999. Three weeks later, the Taliban drove Massoud’s forces from the city. Having garnered 250 opposition leaders and their families, the Taliban fighters herded the captives into houses and set them afire, killing all of them. On the diplomatic front, the Taliban offered to exchange bin Laden for U.S. recognition of their regime. State Department officials spoke directly with Mullah Omar and established a February 1999 deadline to deliver bin Laden to U.S. authorities. Omar refused after declaring bin Laden to be his guest. Shortly afterward, bin Laden departed Kandahar amid reports of growing dissension between him and the Taliban. Albright warned the Pakistanis that their country was becoming more and more isolated in the region because of their refusal to act decisively against the Taliban. The growing isolation was true because the murder of the Iranian diplomats in Mazar in August 1998 had so infuriated Iran against the Taliban and Pakistan that relations between Iran and the United States had begun to improve. Another major issue was the Taliban’s attitude about the drug trade, a blatant contradiction of Muslim theocracy.

While Afghans died in civil war, opium dealers thrived. The U.S. State Department had labeled Afghanistan an international conduit for drugs as early as 1996. Although drugs are not permitted under Islamic law, growing poppies to convert into opium was permitted freely. “Opium is permissible because it is consumed by kafirs in the West and not by Muslims or Afghans,” argued the Taliban’s antidrug force commander. The reality was that opium consumption helped finance the fighting necessary for the Taliban to gain control of the country. From 1995 to 1997, during much of the fighting to consolidate power (gaining control of the Afghan cities), opium production increased 25 percent. The UN attempted to negotiate with the Taliban, promising aid to grow substitute crops if they would eliminate the drug trade. That effort ended when the Taliban ordered the UN to leave Afghanistan in 1998. Government customs revenues and agricultural taxes for poppy propagation went directly into the Taliban treasury—a box kept under Mullah Omar’s bed. Afghan opium accounted for 72 percent of the world’s supply in 2000.

When the elusive bin Laden was discovered residing south of Jalalabad on 4 July 1999, ABC News had just reported that Saudi Arabian and Persian Gulf businessmen were financing his terrorist activities. The Saudis arrested one banker on charges of funneling $2 million to bin Laden. This prompted President Clinton to issue Executive Order 13129. On 9 July, the Taliban acknowledged that bin Laden was in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was meeting with President Clinton when Afghanistan admitted that bin Laden was living there. Although the president angrily addressed the lack of Pakistani cooperation in apprehending bin Laden and pointedly told Sharif that he would send a communiqué outlining Pakistan’s suggested role, that topic was not a part of the message. Sharif did agree to withdraw Pakistani military forces from Kashmir—at the time the critical concern to the United States because India and Pakistan possessed nuclear weapons. The internecine war in Afghanistan and bin Laden were overshadowed by the threat of regional nuclear war.

Although there was fighting in the first half of 1999, it was sporadic. A major three-prong offensive that Taliban forces launched from Kabul signaled the resumption of full-blown combat on 28 July. For the first time this major Taliban effort combined tanks, artillery, and organized infantry. Bagram fell on 31 July, and other cities quickly followed, including a key point along Massoud’s supply line to Tajikistan. From the Shomali plain north of Kabul the Taliban drove the refugees—numbers varied from 55,000 to 250,000—toward the capital. In their wake was devastation—burned villages, destroyed crops, slaughtered livestock, and uncounted numbers of dead villagers. Massoud struck back, killing more than 1,000 Taliban fighters, including Arabs and Pakistanis. When he quickly closed on Kabul and Bagram, Mullah Omar sought help from Pakistan; 2,000 more madrassa students volunteered. On 24 August, Omar survived an assassination attempt by unknown persons when a fuel truck was detonated near his house in Kandahar. Those responsible never sought recognition. With Afghan assistance to capture bin Laden seemingly out of the question, the U.S. government sought alternate approaches.

Having prevented nuclear war between India and Pakistan, Washington redirected its priorities toward capturing bin Laden. Having concluded that Pakistan offered the best avenue to that end, President Clinton lifted some trade sanctions in September. The following month Prime Minister Sharif’s brother met with several Persian Gulf states’ envoys to apprise them of Pakistan’s intent to demand bin Laden’s extradition from Afghanistan. The Pakistan army chief of intelligence met with Mullah Omar to insist that the Taliban stop training Pakistanis who he considered threats to his nation’s stability. A few days later Omar made an official statement denouncing terrorism.

To complicate matters, on 12 October 1999, Pakistan army General Pervez Musharraf orchestrated a military coup that overthrew the democratically elected Sharif. Musharraf, supported by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, pledged to reduce tensions along the Indian border while warning India not to take advantage of the situation in Pakistan. As for Afghanistan, Musharraf vowed to “continue our efforts to achieve a just and peaceful solution. . . .” The U.S. government was disappointed that the general did not set a date to return to democracy.

During his visit to Pakistan in March 2000, President Clinton reiterated that the United States supported “an orderly restoration of democratic civilian rule” and was adamantly opposed to regional terrorism. Musharraf promised to work with the Taliban to resolve the problem of bin Laden. The following month, Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering warned the Pakistani chief of intelligence not “to put [his country] in the position” of supporting people “that are our enemies.” In May, Pickering reiterated that same message to the Taliban deputy foreign minister. Mullah Omar responded that the change in leadership was an internal Pakistani matter.

The deteriorating situation in Afghanistan once again became a discussion topic in the UN Security Council. On 22 October 1999, the Council belatedly condemned the Taliban for the 1999 summer offensive; called for the extradiction of bin Laden, an end to drug trafficking, and the restoration of human rights; and castigated the leaders for the Iranian diplomats killed in 1998. CIA Director George Tenet told a Senate Select Committee in February 2000 that bin Laden “is still the foremost among these terrorists” and that “he wants to strike further blows against America.” The Taliban, following the typical summer campaign cycle, launched another offensive in July 2000 that concentrated on Massoud’s headquarters in Taloqan. On 5 September, the city fell. Massoud was pushed back into the Panjshir valley from where he made an unsuccessful attempt to retake Taloqan. While Massoud and Dostum had met in March 1999 in Termez allegedly to plan joint operations, the “Lion of Panjshir” appeared to be battling the Taliban alone, despite Dostum’s assertion on 1 October to the contrary.

Figure 12. George Tenet.

By early 2001, with Massoud controlling only portions of the two northeastern provinces, Badakhshan and Takhar, neighboring countries began giving recognition of the dominant Taliban regime and Tajikistan. Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov stated that Russian troops would not be allowed into his country to move against the Taliban. He also made it clear that Uzbekistan would avoid any border confrontations with the Taliban. In October 2000, Karimov, who previously declared the Taliban to be the “main source of fanaticism and extremism in the region,” stated a willingness to accept it as the government of Afghanistan if “the people of Afghanistan trust it.”

What the change reflected was the growing influence of the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Trained in bin Laden’s camps, IMU leaders made the creation of an Islamic state within Uzbekistan a major goal. Improved relations with the Taliban would potentially allow the Uzbeks to focus on destroying the IMU as well as eliminating an excuse for Russian intervention.

In January 2001, the trial of four men accused of bombing the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania began in New York. Among 22 suspects, also indicted was Osama bin Laden, in absentia. On 18 May 2001, a jury convicted the four and sentenced them on 18 October 2001 to life imprisonment without parole. Thirteen of the men indicted, including bin Laden, remained at large. In Afghanistan, the Taliban continued to consolidate its repressive hold on most of the country. On 9 September 2001, two assassins, posing as journalists filming a documentary, struck Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. They detonated a video camera packed with explosives. One assassin was killed in the explosion, and bodyguards killed the other. The “Lion of Panjshir” died en route to the hospital. Shortly after the act, bin Laden released a video interview to the world press in which he stated, “It’s time to penetrate America and Israel and hit them where it hurts the most.”

Two days later, the people of the United States were painfully aware that Osama bin Laden’s threat had been a promise.