Soviet Invasion Of Afghanistan Research Articles

Brokering a Buffer State: Afghan Neutrality and American Diplomacy, 1973–1979

ABSTRACTThis article argues that during the 1970s, the United States Department of State and other US officials sought to promote and maintain Afghan political neutrality as a means of Soviet containment in Central Asia. This piece follows the evolution of this diplomatic model through the 1970s, how it interacted with various Afghan regimes and ultimately became an impediment on the imagination of US officials in predicting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Long Wars: Demonstrating the Corrosive Effects of Irregular Wars on Dominant States

Great powers overextend their security apparatus attempting to maintain an international system from which they benefit. Costly expenditures of internally mobilized hard power in irregular wars increases the the decline of relative power while externally mobilized power in the form of partisans may delay or defeat power transition. This paper examines the U. S. war in Vietnam and the Soviet war in Afghanistan in order to determine if long periods of irregular war had an effect on those state’s relative position in the internaitonal system. This paper will demonstrate that those wars eroded each position without the large, structural war predicted by normative IR theory.

Sociopolitical Challenges of Afghan Society: Post 9/11 Scenario

The article examines various issues in Afghanistan in the context that emerged after 9/11. It focuses on security, maintenance as well as various development pursuits encompassing the political and economic dimensions of Afghanistan. Being a neighbor of Pakistan, Afghanistan faced a number of challenges, as both countries rely upon a cordial and mutually cooperative relation. However, there exists a trust deficit and the war against terrorism has itself become an issue of major concern between the respective countries. Afghanistan urges Pakistan to do more to stop the alleged extremist infiltrations into Afghan territory. While, Pakistan repeatedly denies such charges and holds Afghan government itself responsible for its failure to check cross border incursions. Foreign powers, especially the Indian involvement in Afghan internal affairs has affected its relations with Pakistan. According to some analysts, the situation has worsened to such an extent that its long term national interests have been adversely affected, especially in the post 9/11 scenario. Pakistan and Afghanistan inherit a great significance for each other. Geo-strategic, socio-political, economic, and other reasons make it a compulsion for both countries to have a cordial relation in their respective vested interests and in the larger interests of peace in the regional as well as international context. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan hosted a million refugees. Since then it’s a burden on the economy of Pakistan. But, Pakistan never complained to Afghanistan and the international community. These two potential nations of South Asia can defeat and remove many ills faced because of some misunderstandings and ineffective foreign policy. But, such a prospect is only possible if the leadership of both countries successfully tackles all outstanding issues in their bilateralrelationship.

The Soviet-Afghan War through the Eyes of an Orientalist Scholar and KGB Officer

This review considers the book Afghanistan: The USSR Military and Political Presence. 1979 – 1989 by V. S. Khristoforov (published by the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2016). According to the reviewer, the work reflects the perception of an officer of the USSR KGB Mission in Afghanistan, who was also a qualified historian and Orientalist. The research is based on materials from the Central Archive of the FSB, the Archives of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, and the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History. The author also refers to a number of documents from Afghan archives. V. S. Khristoforov is critical of Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, emphasising that it undermined the USSR’s authority in the international arena. He proves that during the presence of Soviet counselors in Afghanistan, it was their responsibility to take decisions: the Afghan leaders practically recused themselves from ruling the country. Additionally, the author demonstrates that the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan did not result in the normalisation of the country’s situation. The reviewer maintains that the book makes a considerable contribution to the historiography of the issue in question.

Geneses, Causes, and Ramification of Militancy in FATA in the Post 9/11 Scenario

The basic aim of the paper is to highlight the impacts of militancy on the Federally Administrated Tribal Area. Strategically the area is very important, and it is situated between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The area also played a very important role in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Before and after 9/11 most of the militants fled to the Tribal areas of Pakistan to seek shelter. The area was used as a launching pad by militants. There were safe sanctuaries of those militants and thus it was a threat to the integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan. As a result, a number of military operations were launched to eliminate those safe sanctuaries. The whole scenario has had some impacts on the life of tribesmen. The paper is an attempt to investigate the root causes of militancy and its impacts on FATA after 9/11.

Islamic Military Alliance (IMA) – and Pakistan

The power politics and dominance are recurring features of Middle East which is in the continuous state of transformation ever since the Iranian revolution of 1979 and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The United States since the oil crises of 1970s has declared energy security. The unfortunate incident of 9/11 generated ferocious US response which was unleashed in the Middle East on the premise of regime change. This transition has proved to be uncertain and full of risks with catastrophic consequences and resultant rise of non- state (NSA) actors like ISIS and ISIL. This article unveils the basic contours and prime motives behind formation of IMA, its aims and objectives, analyses its efficacy in countering violent extremism with potential implications for Pakistan as a major stake holder and suggests a way forward for Pakistan to convert this into opportunity by mitigating challenges. This is academic narrative, views and comments are author’s own.

The Violence Curtain: Occupied Afghan Turkestan and the Making of a Central Asian Borderscape

This article examines the history of Soviet-Afghan encounters in northern Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Drawing on archival materials from the former Soviet Union as well as recently published memoir collections by Soviet border guards, it shows how during the 1980s, northern Afghanistan was subjected to a unique regime of degraded sovereignty. While all regions of Afghanistan were subject to military occupation by the Soviet Army, in northern Afghanistan, 62,000 Soviet Border Troops occupied the northern reaches. Their goal was not only to secure the Soviet-Afghan border, but also to eliminate mujāhidīn forces in Badakhshan, encourage peaceful and commercial cross- border interactions between Soviet and Afghan Badakhshan, and secure the entire territory inside an “antiseptic” green zone extending 100 to 120 kilometers into northern Afghanistan. As they did so, many elements of the Soviet border regime migrated into Afghanistan itself. Building on earlier work on the making of the Soviet border through areas of security inside the USSR, this piece shows the afterlives of that border as something also capable of being extended outside the USSR itself. In doing so, it not only enhances our understanding of the Soviet-Afghan War but also reveals the Soviet Union and its border forces to be transnational actors in their own right, rather than mere defenders of a statist territorial order.

F. Ackermann, M. Galbas (Eds), “Back from Afghanistan: The Experiences of Soviet Afghan War Veterans”

F. Ackermann, M. Galbas (Eds), “Back from Afghanistan: The Experiences of Soviet Afghan War Veterans”

Mothers, prostitutes, and the collapse of the USSR: the representation of women in Svetlana Aleksievich’s Zinky Boys

ABSTRACTIn Zinky Boys, Svetlana Aleksievich’s “documentary novel” about the Soviet-Afghan War, women are represented in three ways: the “Motherland-mother” construct implicit in the memory of World War II but that does not fit the Soviet-Afghan War; the “mournful mother” construct of those (a majority in the book) who do not accept the loss of their sons for what they see as an unjust cause; and the “morally-loose woman-at-war” construct rooted in men’s predatory behaviour. Amid the dramatic political reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s, the representation of women in Zinky Boys reflects a changing discourse in Soviet society on the war in Afghanistan that helped pave the way for the collapse of the USSR. The alienation of returning veterans, the pain of mourning mothers who do not accept the reason for their sons’ deaths, and the pervasiveness of a “bad girls” image of women who served in the war all combined to undercut the power of the Motherland-mother construct so much a part of the cult of World War II this generation grew up on. Disillusionment with the Soviet-Afghan War was a crucial part of the unravelling of the discursive conditions of the late Soviet period.

Svetlana Aleksievich’s changing narrative of the Soviet–Afghan War in Zinky Boys

ABSTRACTThe goal of this article is to trace the developing narrative of the Soviet–Afghan War in Svetlana Aleksievich’s Tsinkovye mal’chiki (Zinky Boys) by contrasting the author’s initial representation of the truth about Afghanistan in the 1990 full-text edition with the most recent representation found in the 2016 edition of the book. Publicly, Aleksievich has downplayed these textual alterations with the explanation that her interviewees are “living documents,” and that therefore she occasionally makes changes that reflect the interviewees’ evolving perspectives of the war. This may be true to a certain extent, but the present article identifies trends that suggest a more focused ideological intent or motivation behind the changes. Aleksievich’s evolving representation of truth is considered in three interrelated concerns: (1) truth as it relates to the genre of historical accounts; (2) truth as it relates to individual memory processing; and (3) truth as it relates to the document.Cet article vise à tracer le récit en développement de la guerre soviéto-afghane dans le livre Tsinkovye mal’chiki (Cercueils de zinc ; Zinky Boys en anglais) de Svetlana Aleksievitch. Pour ce faire, l’article met en contraste la représentation initiale de la vérité sur l’Afghanistan dans la version intégrale de 1990, avec la représentation la plus récente dans l’édition de 2016. Aleksievitch a publiquement minimisé l’importance de ces modifications textuelles, expliquant que ses interviewés sont des « documents vivants », donc parfois elle introduit des modifications qui expriment leurs perspectives changeantes de la guerre. Cela peut être vrai dans une certaine mesure, pourtant cet article identifie des tendances laissant supposer une intention ou une motivation idéologique plus ciblée à l’origine des modifications. Il examine cette représentation changeante de la vérité sous trois aspects liés : (1) la vérité relative au genre des récits historiques ; (2) la vérité relative à l’intégration des souvenirs de la part de l’individu ; et (3) la vérité relative au document.

Introduction

Introduction

El mundo de Malala: Una historia vivida en un contexto coyuntural heredero de la Guerra Fría

Este trabajo es un ensayo interpretativo del contexto histórico en el que ha vivido Malala Yousafzai, la joven galardonada con el Premio Nobel de la Paz en 2014. Mediante la perspectiva coyuntural se parte de la invasión soviética de Afganistán, para reconocer los orígenes de un conflicto que acabó por envolver a Pakistán dentro de una realidad compleja con el establecimiento de poblaciones afganas en una región fronteriza. Acto seguido, se ahonda en el fundamentalismo pakistaní para brindar una perspectiva de un fenómeno que floreció durante el siglo XX, que empezó a tener mayor importancia en la década de 1970 y que ha sido más patente sobre todo a partir de 2001. Finalmente, se analiza la historia vivida de Malala inmersa en un entorno fundamentalista comandado predominantemente por los talibanes.

Pakistan’s Internal Security Dilemma: Strategic Dimension

The paper reflects on Pakistan's complex security situation and the causes of current challenges that Pakistan is facing due to vacillating foreign policies. It also reviews the role of factors that contributed towards the instability of the country. After Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan involved in a proxy war and trained Mujahideen to liberate Afghanistan. In 1980's sectarianism floored the state, and since it has rooted in Pakistani society. The country brokered several Post-Soviet peace agreements between different militaristic groups in Afghanistan but in vain. Finally, it recognized Taliban for the cause of peace (though temporary) on its Western border. After 9/11 the country had to reluctantly take a "U" turn on its Afghan policy under immense US pressure. This swing of policy opened a Pandora-box for the country i.e. terrorism, Jihadist, ethnicity, sectarianism, economic and political instability in Pakistan. In this state of affairs corruption, deteriorating law and order situation, political instability and economic fragility, variables of internal security, act as key factors in a peaceful solution of conflicts.

Anti-West frames dominate Afghan war news coverage

A content analysis of war-specific frames used by Soviet mainstream newspapers Izvestia and Komsomolskaya Pravda during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan revealed that the national political system and foreign policy heavily influenced war reporting in the pre-Gorbachev era. In a censored environment, a highly polarized approach framed the West as the enemy and the USSR as the supporter of the Afghan people.

Armed conflict and population displacement as drivers of the evolution and dispersal of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

The "Beijing" Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) lineage 2 (L2) is spreading globally and has been associated with accelerated disease progression and increased antibiotic resistance. Here we performed a phylodynamic reconstruction of one of the L2 sublineages, the central Asian clade (CAC), which has recently spread to western Europe. We find that recent historical events have contributed to the evolution and dispersal of the CAC. Our timing estimates indicate that the clade was likely introduced to Afghanistan during the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan war and spread further after population displacement in the wake of the American invasion in 2001. We also find that drug resistance mutations accumulated on a massive scale in Mtb isolates from former Soviet republics after the fall of the Soviet Union, a pattern that was not observed in CAC isolates from Afghanistan. Our results underscore the detrimental effects of political instability and population displacement on tuberculosis control and demonstrate the power of phylodynamic methods in exploring bacterial evolution in space and time.

Bringing Human Rights In: The Campaign Against the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games and the Origins of the Nexus Between Human Rights and the Olympic Games

This essay investigates the American-led boycott against the 1980 Olympic Games from a human rights perspective. While it does not deny that the boycott was a response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, it argues that discussions over a possible Olympic boycott were popular since the mid-seventies. To human rights activists and Non-Government Organizations, this was a natural consequence of Soviet violations of human rights. In analyzing the differences between the political debates which developed in Western Europe and in the United States, it argues that the 1980 Olympic boycott represented the first time in which a proposal for an Olympic boycott was framed in the human rights language.

Spooks, Tribes, and Holy Men: The Central Intelligence Agency and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

The Central Intelligence Agency played a crucial role in US policy during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. However, scholars have overly focused on the idea that the CIA promoted a global ‘jihad’. This article instead looks at knowledge-formation within the agency to understand US approaches to the conflict, and to Afghan society more generally. Drawing on recently declassified analyses and reporting from intra-agency departments, this article reveals that agency officials focused largely on the idea of ‘tradition’ to understand the organization and motivations of the Afghan resistance. This trope emphasized Afghanistan's historically ‘tribal’ and ethnically divided nature and presented a static view of an unchangeable, backwards society incapable of coordinating to counter the Soviet military presence. In this reading, officials actually downplayed in the importance of Islam to Afghan society, dismissing it as a potential political force in the region. Ultimately, this article reflects on CIA officials’ limitations in envisioning a post-invasion Afghanistan, finding explanations in their rigid views of Afghan political and social organization which prevented them from recognizing the invasion's potential to catalyze longer-term changes.

The New Battlefield: The Hidden History of U.S Foreign Policy towards Afghanistan

<p class="a"><span lang="EN-US">The United States foreign policy has been characterized as a long and zigzag history since the beginning of America in the late eighteenth century. This vital study is a part of this long history. During 1979 Soviets invaded Afghanistan and a Soviet-Afghan War was born, American’s major influence was to be towards this region and reforms in their foreign policy to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan. It took place between 1979 and 1989 about a decade. This study seeks to answer the following questions: “Which were the U.S key foreign policy in the context of Afghan-Soviet War during 1979 and 1989 under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan Presidencies and how these Administrations provoked hard decisions against Soviet Union and established their own doctrines?” “How the U.S got the Afghan Mujahedeen’s confidence and funneled the billions of dollars and global dangerous weapons to them chest through Pakistani ISI to punish the Soviets in Afghanistan?” “How the U.S hidden actor’s played the key role in this war?” Results based on U.S recently declassified material regarding this war from 1979-89 and found that soon after the Soviets intervention of Afghanistan, U.S begun hidden supply to Afghan Mujahedeen chest through Pakistani ISI and both the U.S Presidents, Carter and Reagan, took hard decisions including established their doctrines to protect the Persian Gulf Region and its interests. In this game, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Charlie Wilson, William Casey, Howard Hart and Stansfield M Turner played the hidden role and finally expelled out the Soviets from Afghanistan.</span></p>

Intelligence and security — perspectives from Pakistan

During the period 2006-2010, the author was based at a higher education institution in Peshawar close to the Afghan border. From this position, he was able to observe (and sometimes directly participate in) and evaluate the wider political events which shaped the drastic deterioration of security in the region. Although this has improved to some extent recently, the security situation was at its worst from 2007 until the end of the author’s tenure, during which time Peshawar was in the eye of a storm of bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings. To understand these events fully – and therefore to suggest appropriate responses and long-term solutions – it is essential to appreciate the historical factors that shaped the timing and character of the unrest and other relevant factors such as the role of the intelligence agencies. Of these, the most important were the consequences of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 and the growth of the Taliban following their withdrawal 10 years later. Much of what follows in the latter part of this article is anecdotal, but may nonetheless be helpful to those attempting to get beneath the surface of much that is published in the media about events in the Pak-Afghan region.

Génesis del fundamentalismo islámico. Auge de los movimientos islamistas globales con los ejemplos de Egipto y Argelia de 1979 a 2001

Since the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that same year, a new phenomenon in contemporary history, which is the rise of Islam, was developed. During the 90s, it became a movement of global range, expanding across the globe, with huge implications for security, politics and international relations. This article analyzes the reason or principles by which Islamist movements emerged, the reason for their radicalization, how their ideology affects international security, using in this case two clear examples, viz. Algeria in the Maghreb and Egypt in the Mashreq. It discusses the nearly 30 years of Islamist rise, its causes, political motivations, modus operandi, its involvement in the regional politics of the Middle East as well as its international expansion and proselytism, where a large and complex activity by these groups is located. Keywords: Islamism, Middle East, armed groups, armed Islamic group, Islamic Jihad.