| Mujahideen Warriors Of Afghanistan |
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As warfare became more sophisticated, outside support and regional coordination grew. The Afghan government, having secured a treaty in December 1978 that allowed them to call on Soviet forces, repeatedly requested the introduction of troops in Afghanistan in the spring and summer of 1979. They requested Soviet troops to provide security and to assist in the fight against the mujahideen rebels. The Soviet government responded and sent a detachment of tanks, BMPs, and crews to guard the government in Kabul and to secure the Bagram and Shindand airfields. The mujahideen (Arabic for people fighting for freedom) were fighters from the mountainous areas of the largely rural country, and also maintained bases in the neighboring Pakistan. They belonged to various different factions, but all shared, to varying degrees, a similarly conservative 'Islamic' ideology. They were a mix of Afghan resistance fighters, Afghan refugees who had crossed into Pakistan at the onset of the Soviet invasion and later been recruited to fight the Soviet infidels, and Islamists and Muslims from other Arab nations who answered the international call to jihad against the Soviets. They were entirely independent of the government. They rebelled against President Mohammed Daoud Khan’s pro-Soviet Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) during the late 1970s. At the DRA's request, the Soviet Union intervened. The mujahideen then fought against Soviet and DRA troops during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Mujahideen fought under the command of tribal leaders, who also headed Islamist political parties, which ranged from radical to moderate. The mujahideen received arms by way of Pakistan and Iran, both of which share a border. They made use of an arsenal of guerrilla tactics to thwart the Soviets, such as laying ambushes or blowing up gas pipelines between the two countries. They were estimated to be about 90,000 strong in the mid-1980s. Many Muslims from other countries volunteered to assist the various mujahideen groups in Afghanistan, and gained significant experience in guerrilla warfare. The mujahideen were supported by a number of other countries, with the US (during the administration of Ronald Reegan and President Jimmy Carter) and Saudi Arabia offering the greatest financial support. Under Reagan, U.S. support for the mujahideen evolved into an official U.S. foreign policy, known as the Reagan Doctrine, which included U.S. support for anti-Soviet movements in Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. The US also trained the insurgents who were also aided by others: the United Kingdom, Egypt, China, Iran, and Pakistan. Ground support, for political reasons, was limited to regional countries. The harsh and inhospitable land and the deadly treatment that the Soviets received from the people in towns and countryside gradually effected the Soviet soldiers' psyche, and the indoctrination they had been subject to during their training soon melted away as they increasingly faced the grim realities of the real war. The Soviets grossly underestimated the huge cost of the Afghan venture. However, their occupation of Afghanistan was as brutal as the Vietnam war, killing more than a million Afghans. The Afghan war was fought under four general secretaries-Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov and Gorbachev. The final troop withdrawal started on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989 under the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. After the Soviet Union pulled out of the conflict in the late 1980s, the mujahideen fought each other in the subsequent Afghan Civil War.  |
