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 Afghanistan |  Poland |
|---|---|
| Diplomatic mission | |
| Afghan Embassy, Warsaw | Polish Embassy, Kabul (closed) |
Afghanistan and Poland established diplomatic relations in 1928. Afghanistan has an embassy in Warsaw.
| | |
Afghanistan | Poland |
|---|---|
| Diplomatic mission | |
| Afghan Embassy, Warsaw | Polish Embassy, Kabul (closed) |
Afghanistan and Poland established diplomatic relations in 1928. Afghanistan has an embassy in Warsaw.
Modern relations between Afghanistan and Poland dated back from 20th century, when King Amanullah Khan visited Poland at 1928 and received a warm welcome from the Polish Government. [1] This developed into full diplomatic relations bewteen the two states. However, relations were severed after the World War II and later Cold War, in which both countries had little to no formal contact.
Following the Saur Revolution, Afghanistan became a Communist country aligning itself with the eastern bloc nations. Following internal problems the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan in December 1979 killing the Khalqist leader Hafizullah Amin during Operation Storm-333 and starting the Soviet-Afghan War. Poland as part of communist Eastern Bloc sided with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union against the western backed Mujahedeen, but at the same time, the growing Solidarity movement in Poland would lead to the collapse of communist rule there. Many anti Communist Poles showed support and solidarity toward Mujahedeen against the DRA and USSR. [2]
On February 15, 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew its forces from the Republic of Afghanistan starting the Afghan Civil War between forces loyal to Mohammad Najibullah's Fatherland Party government and those of the Pakistani backed Afghan Interim Government. On June 4, 1989, Poland communist rule ended in Poland with the Polish People's Republic being dissolved in 1990. In 1991 Communist hardliners attempted a coup d'état against President Gorbachav. The failure of the Coup accelerated the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Poland supported the Yeltsin government while Afghanistan supported the Communist hardliners, many of whom were in favor of continued financial aid to Najibullah's internationally isolated government. The new Russian President Boris Yeltsin would soon cut aid in 1992 causing mass starvation and leading to Najibullah to announce his resignation. Peace did not come however as various warlords fought for control of the capital of Kabul leading to another even bloodier civil war involving bloody urban fighting destroying a third of the relatively untouched city of Kabul, crime was rampant as the dissolution of the Afghan Army and law enforcement had led to a breakdown of civil order. [3] In 1994 a movement called the Taliban mostly made up of orphans was formed. The Taliban rapidly expanded recruiting former Mujahedeen and Communist Soldiers. In 1996 the Taliban would take Kabul leading to many of the various warlords who had fought each other for Kabul to unite into the Northern Alliance as a attempt to stop the Taliban from gaining more territory. Poles showed support to the Northern Alliance. Warlord Shah Massoud also had an interview with a number of Poles, including Piotr Balcerowicz, the last to give interview to him before his assassination . [4] Polish intelligence led by Alexander Makowski, assisted by anti-Taliban militias in Afghanistan, also helped discovering the existence of Osama bin Laden and had urged the CIA to kill him at 1999, but the CIA rejected and thus, had missed the chance. The failed attempt was believed to had played a role leading to September 11 attacks by Bin Laden to the U.S. to growing anti-Western sentiment in Muslim world, which Makowski contributed to the missed opportunity to eliminate Bin Laden's threat at 1999. [5]
Poland also contributed troops to Afghanistan in the subsequent Afghan War after the collapse of Taliban rule as part of NATO mission to the country. [6] The Poles were able to win supports from Afghan locals, but it was hampered by American futile efforts in the war. [7] However, due to the cost of the war, sometimes it was referred as Poland's "Vietnam Syndrome" because of incidents like Nangar Khel incident. [8] In October 2012, Afghanistan gave back to Poland one of the country's original Renault FT-17 tanks that had been captured by the Soviets in the Polish-Soviet War and subsequently gifted to the Kingdom of Afghanistan. [9]
Ahmad Shah Massoud was an Afghan politician and military commander. He was a powerful guerrilla commander during the resistance against the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989. In the 1990s, he led the government's military wing against rival militias; after the Taliban takeover, he was the leading opposition commander against their regime until his assassination in 2001.
Abdul Rashid Dostum is an Afghan exiled politician, former Marshal in the Afghan National Army, founder and leader of the political party Junbish-e Milli. Dostum was a major army commander in the communist government during the Soviet–Afghan War, and in 2001 was the key indigenous ally to U.S. Special Forces and the CIA during the campaign to topple the Taliban government. He is one of the most powerful warlords since the beginning of the Afghan wars, known for siding with winners during different wars. Dostum has also referred to as a Kingmaker due to his significant role in Afghan politics.
Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai, commonly known as Dr. Najib, was an Afghan politician who served as the General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the leader of the one-party ruling Republic of Afghanistan from 1986 to 1992 and as well as the President of Afghanistan from 1987 until his resignation in April 1992, shortly after which the mujahideen took over Kabul. After a failed attempt to flee to India, Najibullah remained in Kabul. He lived in the United Nations headquarters until his assassination during the Taliban's capture of Kabul.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan politician, former mujahideen leader and drug trafficker. He is the founder and current leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin political party, so called after Mohammad Yunus Khalis split from Hezbi Islami in 1979 to found Hezb-i Islami Khalis. He has twice served as Prime Minister during the 1990s.
This article on the history of Afghanistan covers the period from the fall of the Najibullah government in 1992 to the end of the international military presence in Afghanistan.
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf is an exiled Afghan politician and former mujahideen commander. He took part in the war against the Marxist–Leninist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government in the 1980s, leading the Afghan mujahideen faction Ittehad-al-Islami.
The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, was a military alliance of groups that operated between early 1992 and 2001 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. At that time, many non-Pashtun Northerners originally with the Republic of Afghanistan led by Mohammad Najibullah became disaffected with Pashtun Khalqist Afghan Army officers holding control over non-Pashtun militias in the North. Defectors such as Rashid Dostum and Abdul Momim allied with Ahmad Shah Massoud and Ali Mazari forming the Northern Alliance. The alliance's capture of Mazar-i-Sharif and more importantly the supplies kept there crippled the Afghan military and began the end of Najibullah's government. Following the collapse of Najibullah's government the Alliance would fall with a Second Civil War breaking out however following the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan's (Taliban) takeover of Kabul, The United Front was reassembled.
Abdul Haq was an Afghan mujahideen commander who fought against the Soviet-backed People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the de facto Afghan government in the 1980s. He was killed by the Taliban in October 2001 while trying to create a popular uprising against the Taliban in Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11th attacks.
The 1989–1992 Afghan Civil War, also known as the First Afghan Civil War, took place between the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the Soviet–Afghan War on 15 February 1989 until 27 April 1992, ending the day after the proclamation of the Peshawar Accords proclaiming a new interim Afghan government which was supposed to start serving on 28 April 1992.
The 1992–1996 Afghan Civil War, also known as the Second Afghan Civil War, took place between 28 April 1992—the date a new interim Afghan government was supposed to replace the Republic of Afghanistan of President Mohammad Najibullah—and the Taliban's conquest of Kabul establishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996.
The 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War, also known as the Third Afghan Civil War, took place between the Taliban's conquest of Kabul and their establishing of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996, and the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001: a period that was part of the Afghan Civil War that had started in 1989, and also part of the war in Afghanistan that had started in 1978.
Afghan Arabs are Arab and other Muslim Islamist mujahideen who came to Afghanistan during and following the Soviet–Afghan War to aid the war efforts of native Muslims in the DRA. Despite being called "Afghan" they were not from Afghanistan nor legally citizens of Afghanistan.
The Afghan Mujahideen (Pashto: افغان مجاهدين) were Islamist resistance militias that fought the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War and the subsequent First Afghan Civil War.
The Afghanistan conflict began in 1978 and has coincided with several notable operations by the United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The first operation, code-named Operation Cyclone, began in mid-1979, during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. It financed and eventually supplied weapons to the anti-communist mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan following an April 1978 coup by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and throughout the nearly ten-year military occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, supported an expansion of the Reagan Doctrine, which aided the mujahideen along with several other anti-Soviet resistance movements around the world.
The Shura-e Nazar was created by Ahmad Shah Massoud in 1984 at the northern provinces of Takhar, Badakhshan, Balkh and Kunduz, during the Soviet-Afghan War. It comprised and united about 130 resistance commanders from 12 northern, eastern and central regions of Afghanistan.
The Afghan conflict refers to the series of events that have kept Afghanistan in a near-continuous state of armed conflict since the 1970s. Early instability followed the collapse of the Kingdom of Afghanistan in the largely non-violent 1973 coup d'état, which deposed Afghan monarch Mohammad Zahir Shah in absentia, ending his 40-year-long reign. With the concurrent establishment of the Republic of Afghanistan, headed by Mohammad Daoud Khan, the country's relatively peaceful and stable period in modern history came to an end. However, all-out fighting did not erupt until after 1978, when the Saur Revolution violently overthrew Khan's government and established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Subsequent unrest over the radical reforms that were being pushed by the then-ruling People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) led to unprecedented violence, prompting a large-scale pro-PDPA military intervention by the Soviet Union in 1979. In the ensuing Soviet–Afghan War, the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen received extensive support from Pakistan, the United States, and Saudi Arabia in a joint covert effort that was dubbed Operation Cyclone.
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) intelligence agency of Pakistan has been accused of being heavily involved in covertly running military intelligence programs in Afghanistan since before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The first ISI operation in Afghanistan took place in 1975. It was in "retaliation to Republic of Afghanistan's proxy war and support to the militants against Pakistan". Before 1975, ISI did not conduct any operation in Afghanistan and it was only after decade of Republic of Afghanistan's proxy war against Pakistan, support to militants and armed incursion in 1960 and 1961 in Bajaur that Pakistan was forced to retaliate. Later on, in the 1980s, the ISI in Operation Cyclone systematically coordinated the distribution of arms and financial means provided by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to factions of the Afghan mujahideen such as the Hezb-e Islami (HeI) of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud whose forces would later be known as the Northern Alliance. After the Soviet retreat, the different Mujahideen factions turned on each other and were unable to come to a power sharing deal which resulted in a civil war. The United States, along with the ISI and the Pakistani government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto became the primary source of support for Hekmatyar in his 1992–1994 bombardment campaign against the Islamic State of Afghanistan and the capital Kabul.
On 24 April 1992, the Peshawar Accord was announced by several but not all Afghan mujahideen parties: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of Hezb-e Islami, had since March 1992 opposed these attempts at a coalition government.
The Battle of Jalalabad, also known as Operation Jalalabad or the Jalalabad War, occured in the spring of 1989. It involved the Seven-Party Union based in Peshawar, also known as the Afghan Interim Government or the "Government in exile", supported by the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, attacked Jalalabad. The ISI's Director Gul wanted to see a mujahideen government over Afghanistan, led by Hekmatyar.
The following is an outline of the series of events that led up the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021).
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