Afghanistan Part 2

The Afghan fighters (mujahideen) were poorly armed in their fight against the Russian Marxist regime; in 1984 they began receiving substantial assistance in the form of weapons and training from the US and other outside powers. In May 1985 the seven principal Peshawar-based guerrilla organizations formed an alliance to coordinate their political and military operations against the Soviet occupation. Late in 1985, the mujahideen were active in and around Kabul. The failure of the Soviet Union to win over a significant number of Afghan collaborators or to rebuild a viable Afghan army forced it to bear an increasing responsibility for fighting the resistance and for civilian administration. Soviet and popular displeasure with the Karmal regime led to its demise in May 1986; Karmal was replaced by Muhammad Najibullah, former chief of the Afghan secret police (KHAD). Najibullah was ineffective and highly dependent on Soviet support. Undercut by deep-seated divisions within the PDPA, regime efforts to broaden its base of support proved futile. By the mid-1980s, the tenacious Afghan resistance movement was exacting a high price from the Soviets, both militarily within Afghanistan and by souring the USSR's relations with much of the Western and Islamic world. Informal negotiations for a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan had been underway since 1982. In 1988 the Geneva accords were signed, which included a timetable that ensured full Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan by February 15, 1989. The mujahideen were party neither to the negotiations nor to the 1988 agreement and refused to accept the terms of the accords. As a result, the civil war continued after the Soviet withdrawal. Najibullah's regime was able to remain in power until 1992 but collapsed after the defection of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostam and his Uzbek militia in March. However, when the victorious mujahideen entered Kabul to assume control over the city and the central government, a new round of internecine fighting began between the various militias. With the demise of their common enemy, the militias' ethnic, clan, religious, and personality differences surfaced, and the civil war continued. Seeking to resolve these differences the leaders of the Peshawar-based mujahideen groups established an interim Islamic Jihad Council in mid-April 1992 to assume power in Kabul. Moderate leader Prof. Sibghatullah Mojaddedi was to chair the council for 2 months after which a 10-member leadership council composed of mujahideen leaders and presided over by the head of the Jamiat-i-Islami, Prof. Burhanuddin Rabbani, was to be set up for 4 months. During this 6-month period a Loya Jirga or grand council of Afghan elders and notables would convene and designate an interim administration which would hold power up to a year, pending elections. But in May 1992 Rabbani prematurely formed the leadership council undermining Mojaddedi's fragile authority. In June, Mojaddedi surrendered power to the Leadership Council which then elected Rabbani as President. Heavy fighting broke out in August 1992 between forces loyal to President Rabbani and rival factions, particularly those who supported Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami. After Rabbani extended his tenure in December 1992 fighting in Kabul flared up in January and February 1993. The March 1993 Islamabad Accord, appointed Hekmatyar as Prime Minister, failed to have a lasting effect. A follow-up agreement, the Jalalabad Accord, called for the militias to be disarmed but was never fully implemented. Through 1993 Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami forces allied with the Shi'a Hezb-i-Wahdat militia and clashed intermittently with Rabbani and Masood's Jamiat forces. Cooperating with Jamiat were militants of Sayyaf's Ittehad-i-Islami and troops loyal to ethnic Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostam. On January 1, 1994 Dostam switched sides precipitating large-scale fighting causing 1000s of civilian casualties and creating a new wave of displaced persons and refugees. The country sank even further into anarchy; forces loyal to Rabbani and Masood, both ethnic Tajiks, controlled Kabul and much of the northeast while local warlords exerted power over the rest of the country; this led to the rise in power of the Taliban. In 1994 the Taliban developed enough strength to capture the Kandahar from a local warlord and expanded its control throughout Afghanistan, occupying Kabul in September 1996. The Taliban provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden a Saudi national who had fought with the mujahideen resistance against the Soviets and provided a base for his and other terrorist organizations. Bin Laden provided financial and political support to the Taliban; by the end of 1998 the Taliban occupied about 90% of the country, limiting the opposition largely to a small mostly Tajik corner in the northeast and the Panjshir valley. The Taliban imposed an extreme interpretation of Islam--based upon the rural Pashtun tribal code and committed massive human rights violations particularly directed against women and girls. The Taliban also committed serious atrocities against minority populations particularly the Shi'a Hazara ethnic group and killed many noncombatants. Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group were charged with the bombing of US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam in 1998 and in August 1998 the US launched a cruise missile attack against bin Laden's terrorist camp in southeastern Afghanistan. In 2001, as part of a drive against relics of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past, the Taliban destroyed two huge Buddha statues carved into a cliff face outside of the city of Bamiyan. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda acknowledged their responsibility for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States. Following the Taliban's repeated refusal to expel bin Laden and his group and end its support for international terrorism, the US and its partners in an anti-terrorist coalition began a military campaign on October 7, 2001 targeting terrorist facilities and various Taliban military and political assets within Afghanistan. Under pressure from US military and anti-Taliban forces the Taliban lost Kabul on November 13, 2001.