Comprehending the Afghan Quagmire:
Aid Equals Intervention

The Soviet Union had been looking for this opportunity and immediately agreed to provide financial and infrastructure support. Foreign aid soon became foreign intervention. Once Daoud realized the gamble that he had made, it was too late. The Soviets became entrenched in Afghanistan, initially in the unsuccessful propping up of the minority Afghan communist parties, and finally with the official invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

For the next ten years, the Soviets pummeled Afghanistan, mining the country, and terrorizing and slaughtering its people. America responded by throwing $2 to $3 billion into the Afghan war against the Soviets, relying on Pakistan to help shape the U.S. strategy. Because of its territorial disputes with Afghanistan, Pakistan has never been a proponent of Afghan nationalism. Instead, Pakistan encouraged an Islamic fundamentalist approach to mobilizing against the Soviets. Harnessing the anger of the Muslim world over the invasion, the United States and Pakistan supported an Islamic war against the Soviet Union. It worked. Fundamentalists from throughout the Muslim world, including Osama bin Laden, poured into Pakistan and Afghanistan. The “Afghan” freedom fighters, “the Mujaheddin,” were fierce, driven by anger, moral zeal, and Western arms. Ten years later, in 1989, the Soviets withdrew and the Cold War was won.

For Afghans, the results of this war were devastating: 1.5 million dead, 5 million refugees, the exodus or death of its intellectual community, more than a million landmines, 500,000 widows, hundreds of thousands of orphans, and extremist Islamic groups in Afghanistan armed with some of the deadliest American weapons. The ground was ripe for disaster, but the world looked away from the impending crisis. Buoyed over the collapse of communism, and suddenly disinterested in the messy Afghan aftermath, the West allowed a political vacuum to develop in Afghanistan between 1989 and 1992.

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