Afghan Communist Research Articles

In search of Islamic legitimacy: the USSR, the Afghan communists and the Muslim world

ABSTRACT During the Afghan War, the Mujahideen claimed that the Afghan communists were atheists who were subservient to Moscow and did not have the legitimacy to rule Afghanistan. The war became a contest for legitimacy in Afghanistan and internationally. The Soviets and the Afghan communists portrayed communist Afghanistan as Islamic and therefore legitimate in the international arena. The Soviets elaborated an information campaign emphasising Islam and strengthened Afghanistan’s contacts with Muslim countries to show that the Afghan communists were Muslims too. They hoped international recognition would reduce Muslim countries’ support to the Mujahideen and improve the Afghan communists’ acceptance at home.

US Incursion in Afghanistan: Right or Necessity

Throughout history, Afghanistan has been beset by warlords, internal strife and also subjected to foreign invasions. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century’s, it was at the centre of the “Great Game” played between the Russian Empire and British India. In the late twentieth century the last Afghan War, which involved the mujahedeen with support from Pakistan, the US and other powers on one side and the Afghan communist government and the Soviet Union on the other, ended with the latter’s withdrawal in 1989. In the mujahedeen and Taliban, the people of Afghanistan hoped for a future of peace and prosperity, rather than the hostility that was to come. In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US, international forces invaded the country. Although the Taliban were toppled within a month, much was left to rebuild and reconstruct. This paper delineates the role US played in Afghanistan, why did the US went there in the first place, to what extent can we say US has rights to be in Afghanistan, which mandate are they fulfilling and what are the reasons behind their pulling back? These and many more questions are what this paper attempt to answer.

“Communist Muslims”

Abstract Soviet leaders sent troops into Afghanistan in December 1979 to support a friendly Marxist-Leninist regime in its conflict against a popular insurgency and help it build a new society. When the Soviet troops withdrew nine years later, they left behind a state that had none of the nominal characteristics of a Soviet-type Communist country. During the war, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan had discarded Marxism-Leninism and turned to Islam. This article examines how, with Moscow's support, the Afghan Communists Islamicized their discourse and policies as they tried to gain support from the population and co-opt insurgent fighters.

‘When you find yourself keep moving’: adapting to change in A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

In the years following the Afghan communist party’s bloody coup of 1978, Afghanistan has been devastated by conflicts that have killed and displaced millions: its people having accounted for the largest refugee group in the world during the 1990s. With his second novel, A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear, the Afghan writer and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi vividly conveys the experience of someone forced to begin life again in exile. In this essay, it is argued that, for this endeavour, Rahimi pays particular attention to the anguish and confusion caused by the loss of one’s sense of personal-identity. However, it is also argued that the author is similarly interested in the empowering aspects of such a loss; in particular, the opportunity for re-examining inherited understandings about who we are. As such, the essay explores Rahimi’s method of setting the debilitating and enabling effects of exile against one another. It concludes by maintaining that Rahimi’s intention, in doing this, is to reveal the dangers inherent in upholding too rigid a conception of personal identity; especially for those who have been divided from the land and culture of their birth.

Afghanistan after the Soviets: From jihad to tribalism

In 1989 the Soviet Union withdrew its forces from Afghanistan leaving the embattled Afghan Communist government of President Mohammad Najibullah to fight against an emboldened mujahideen insurgency. Most experts expected a quick mujahideen victory once the Soviets were no longer directly involved in counterinsurgency operations in support of the Afghan government. But in the spring of 1989 the Afghan Communists beat the odds and defeated a mujahideen rebel offensive designed to capture the eastern city of Jalalabad. This proved to be a turning point, and for the next three years the Najibullah regime held out against the mujahideen ‘freedom fighters’. In fact the Afghan Communist regime actually outlasted its sponsor the Soviet Union. The reasons for this remarkable achievement can be traced, in part, to ethnic–tribal divisions among the quarreling mujahideen parties and the Afghan government's ability to exploit them. This largely untold story has obvious implications for understanding the future of post-Karzai Afghanistan, tribalism, ethnicity, and foreign sponsorship in post-US Afghanistan. This article will explore the reasons for the resilience of the Najibullah Communist government and then assess possible implications for a post-2014 Afghan government.

Reassessing Soviet motives for invading Afghanistan: A declassified history

This article reassesses Soviet motives for invading Afghanistan in 1979, based on newly available archival materials, especially from the former USSR. The article argues that these Soviet documents show that the 1979 invasion reflected defensive rather than offensive objectives. Specifically, the USSR sought to restrain extremist elements of the Afghan communist party, who were undermining stability on the southern Soviet frontier. The findings of this article are at odds with with long-standing views that the invasion of Afghanistan was part of a larger Soviet strategy aimed at threatening the Persian Gulf and other western interests.

The Soviet–Afghan War: A Superpower Mired in the Mountains

The Soviet-Afghan War involved more than the Soviets and Mujahideen resistance. Afghan communists (the DRA) were involved in the immediate struggle and a large number of countries supplied the Mujahideen during this “Cold War” hot war. Their struggle and their lessons are outlined. The author does not usually write about footnotes, but he wrote this article during a trip to Iraq and lacked his reference library. Needless to say, he drew on his knowledge about the war and the knowledge he gained from noted authorities on the subject. These include Ali Jalali, Barnett Rubin, Riaz Khan, Mohammad Youssaf, Brace Amstutz, Artem Borovik, Aleksandr Lyakhovskiy, Aleksandr Mayorov, Scott McMichael, Makhmut Gareev, David Isby, Boris Gromov, Rasul Rais, and Louis Dupree.

Notes on the CIA's Secret War in Afghanistan

The new war against terrorism has taken up where the United States left off some years ago in its campaign against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Events of the initial campaign of the terror war, which concluded with the fall of the Tora Bora cave complex in December 2001, as well as developments that can be anticipated in the larger conflict, can be illuminated by reference to the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) efforts in the anti-Soviet war of the 1980s. These notes attempt to touch on key elements of that experience that should be borne in mind today, including the purposefulness of United States programs, the problems inherent in hurried efforts, the crosscutting impacts of local politics and customs, the nature of modern military operations, and the tendency of the solutions ofthe moment to spawn later difficulties.' The CLA operation of the 1980s began as a spoiling operation. In April 1978, during the Carter administration, Afghan Communists overthrew a left-leaning but moderate dictatorship that had itself resulted from a coup against the Afghan monarch. Not satisfied with the slow progress in turning the nation toward socialism, the factions of the Communist party then began to fight each other. Meanwhile, within weeks of the so-called April revolution, Muslim fundamentalists and tribal groupings with no love for the Communists began a resistance movement. The cIA program sought to augment that resistance. Soviet involvement in Afghanistan long predated both the April revolution and the antimonarchist coup of 1973. Beginning in 1955, the Russians had furnished both economic and military aid in amounts totaling $2.5 billion by 1979, and the Soviet Union had become Afghanistan's leading trading partner. At the time of the April revolution there were already a thousand Russian technical experts and military advisers in the country.2 Much as the political machinations of local clients had deepened the American stake in South Vietnam, the Communist coups in Kabul com-

Radio, Politics and Trust in Afghanistan

This article examines the sociohistorical role of radio broadcasting in Afghanistan and analyses the interplay between the radio choices of the audience, political change and conflict. Though never explicitly trusted as a credible information source, the popularity of national radio in Afghanistan was critically weakened following the Communist revolution of 1978 and subsequent abuse of broadcasting under successive Afghan Communist regimes. Analysis highlights how the audience's thirst for unbiased information resulted in a substantial majority turning to the BBC World Service, this international service being perceived as a far more trustworthy and credible alternative. Discussion of the social history of Radio Afghanistan, the Taliban's Voice of Radio Shari'at and the BBC World Service serves to highlight the propagandist media machinery of the Communist era, the radical media policies of the Taliban regime and the value attributed to the BBC's current news reporting. In an example of the global becoming the local, the article concludes by examining how the BBC World Service has become the dominant radio broadcaster in Afghanistan and the extent to which this position is based on the quality of their outputs or their self-promotional discourses concerning impartiality.

The campaign for the caves: The battles for Zhawar in the Soviet‐Afghan war

The battles for Zhawar were fought to cripple guerrilla logistics, but evolved into tests of the legitimacy of the Afghan communist regime and the Mujahideen resistance. The battles exposed serious deficiencies on both sides as the guerrillas conducted a fixed, positional defense and the Soviets and Afghans attempted a major mechanized assault more in keeping with European terrain than the rugged mountainous terrain around Zhawar.

Soviet foreign policymaking and the Afghanistan war: from ‘second Mongolia’ to ‘bleeding wound’

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, lasting from 1979 to 1989, was one of the major chapters in the Cold War. Analysis of how Soviet policy was made has, hitherto, focused on the decision to intervene, in December 1979. Equally important, however, as an episode in the final stages of the Cold War, and as an example of Soviet policy formulation, was the decision to withdraw. Basing itself on declassified Soviet documents, and on a range of interviews with former Soviet and Afghan officials, this article charts the protracted history of the Soviet decision and sets it in context: as with the decision to invade, the withdrawal reflected assessment of multiple dimensions of policymaking, not only the interests and calculation of Soviet leaders, but also relations within the Afghan communist leadership on the one hand, and strategic negotiation with the West on the other.

Prelude to Invasion: The Soviet Union and the Afghan Communists, 1978–1979

Prelude to Invasion: The Soviet Union and the Afghan Communists, 1978–1979

Afghanistan in 1987: A Year of Decision?

The war in Afghanistan has now lasted more than twice as long as the involvement of the Soviet Union in World War II. In eight years, the occupation of Afghanistan has cost Moscow something on the order of $50 billion, and Soviet combat deaths may be as high as 15,000. In return for this expenditure of blood and treasure, the Soviet Union and its Kabul surrogates have inflicted a million casualties on the Afghan people, driven half of them from their homes, laid waste to large areas throughout the country, and created-at five million-the world's largest refugee community. These figures compel reflection on the rationale that underlies Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, on the evolution of Moscow's strategy toward the conflict, and on the relationship of the war to the much-discussed reorientation of Soviet domestic and foreign policy. First of all, the evidence is extensive that Moscow's bottom line in Afghanistan is the Sovietization of the society. Hints of Soviet flexibility have invariably given way to a hard-nosed strategy based on military attrition of the resistance and on using extensive education programs to build a new generation of Afghan communists. Recently, however, Soviet words and initiatives have led to renewed discussion of Moscow's motives. Building on General Secretary Gorbachev's 1986 statement that Afghanistan was a bleeding wound, the Soviets have reduced the theoretical time frame in which they would be prepared to withdraw their troops from three-to-four years to twelve months. They have also indicated that troop withdrawals could begin more or less simultaneously with the ending of outside support for the Afghan resistance, and could perhaps proceed prior to the formation of a successor to the

The Origins of the Afghan Communist Party1

(1988). The Origins of the Afghan Communist Party1. Central Asian Survey: Vol. 7, No. 2-3, pp. 41-57.