A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq by Mark Moyar

Author:Mark Moyar
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-01-30T12:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

The War in Afghanistan

he path to the catastrophic attacks of September ii, 2001, winds through the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the ensuing SovietAfghan War. Intent on bleeding the Soviets, the United States supplied arms to the Islamic rebels of diverse motives and morals who waged bitter war on the Soviets and their Afghan allies across the 198os. The Soviets and the Communist Afghan government, neither of them hindered by a free press or a voting public, imposed draconian punishments on the insurgency's civilian supporters but failed to break the insurgents' will, so the bloodshed dragged on. The first people to have their collective will broken were the Soviets, who withdrew their forces from Afghanistan in 1989. But the war did not end there. Afghan Communists retained control of the government, and they continued to fight the insurgents for another three years before succumbing to enemy blows. By the time the Afghan Communist government was vanquished, the Soviet Union itself had perished, and because of its demise, American assistance to the rebels had ended. Whether continued American aid could have saved the rebels from themselves is, however, doubtful.

Once the Afghan Communists had been dethroned, the rebels turned their weapons on each other. Young warlords, emerging at the helms of rival factions, seized control of resources and public services, trafficked in narcotics, made lucrative businesses of extortion, and committed atrocities against their opponents. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iran backed the factions that they considered most conducive to their own security concerns. Eventually the Pakistanis and Saudis settled on a group of Pashtuns called the Taliban, grim enforcers of a legal code that combined the most extreme elements of the Quran and traditional tribal law. The Taliban tortured men whose beards were insufficiently long, beheaded women who did not wear burqas, and sawed off the arms of thieves. By combating criminals and warlords, they held out the promise of order restored, which was alluring to people tired of omnipresent extortion, theft, and violence. Between 1994 and 1996, Taliban fighters subdued most of the warlords and gained control of the national government, in the process committing numerous atrocities against non-Pashtuns. They were unable, however, to vanquish the Northern Alliance, a collection of Tajik warlords supported by Russia and Iran. The Pashtun population's initial admiration of the Taliban, moreover, eventually turned to sullen resignation, and in some cases armed opposition, as the full weight of Taliban justice crashed down on them.'

In 1996 the Taliban welcomed into Afghanistan the Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda followers, whose variant of radical Islam was similar to the Taliban's. It seemed a perfect partnership-Al Qaeda needed sanctuary from foreign counterterrorists, and the Taliban needed Al Qaeda's help in combating the Northern Alliance. But the marriage did not end in happiness. For a few years, bin Laden was able to perpetrate terrorist attacks against American targets without sparking U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, but the attacks of September 11 were too horrific to be ignored.

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