Despite NATO’s twelve-year effort to establish a stable and prosperous Afghanistan, the country remains fragile, and Taliban militia groups are still capable of launching major attacks against key strategic regions in Kabul and other major Afghan cities. Moreover, foreign troops are expected to pull out from Afghanistan by 2014, paving the way for the Afghan National Army (ANA) to take over responsibility for securing the country. This article will provide some background that may prove instructive as Afghanistan enters this new phase of its history.

Soviet Invasion and Post-Soviet Period

On April 27, 1978, Afghanistan underwent a regime transition: a communist party named ‘The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA),’ with the aid of the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB), overthrew Prime Minister Daoud, paving the way for the PDPA to govern the country. In the years leading up to this transition, the PDPA had frequently proposed constitutional changes to promote secularism, equal rights for minority ethnic groups, and Marxist ideology. The Pashtuns opposed these constitutional reforms, believing that they would violate traditional models of governance and harm Pashtun identity. As a result, this attempt at constitutional reform created a division between the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), the Khalq, and the Parcham. The Khalq were Pashtun leaders and the Parcham were non-Pashtuns. This ethnic cleavage between the two groups created difficulties for a balanced power distribution within the PDPA.

Ethnic divisions complicated PDPA efforts to establish a communist regime in Afghanistan, and it wasn’t long before numerous ethno-political conflicts were erupting between the Khalq and the Parcham. Soviet policymakers in Moscow viewed the ethnic division as an obstacle to establish the PDPA as the preeminent political party in Afghan politics. As a result, Soviet military intervention was authorized to back up the political writ of the PDPA. In 1979, the Red Army and the PDPA launched an assassination campaign against Afghan elites and intellectuals who opposed the communist regime. The aim of the assassination campaign was to eradicate urban intellectual leaders and foster a new generation of elites sympathetic to the communist cause.

The assassination campaign and the dissemination of communist ideology via the education system were quite successful in the urban areas of Afghanistan, yet weaker in the rural areas due to presence of the Mujahideen fighters. The Mujahideen continued to grow stronger thanks to widespread bitterness towards the Soviet occupation, primarily in rural areas. Zbigniew Brzezinski, United States National Security Advisor, wanted to take advantage of these feelings and confront the Red Army using asymmetrical war tactics. With the support of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the assistance of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Operation Cyclone was launched, which aimed to provide military and financial support to the Afghan Mujahideen. These arms helped to negate the Soviets’ technological advantage on the battlefield.