The Soviet–Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Soviet-controlled Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) from 1979 to 1989. The war was a major conflict of the Cold War as it saw extensive fighting between Soviet Union, the DRA and allied paramilitary groups against the Afghan mujahideen and their allied foreign fighters. While the mujahideen were backed by various countries and organizations, the majority of their support came from Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Iran, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. The involvement of the foreign powers made the war a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Combat took place throughout the 1980s, mostly in the Afghan countryside. The war resulted in the deaths of approximately 3,000,000 Afghans, while millions more fled from the country as refugees; most externally displaced Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan and in Iran. Approximately 6.5% to 11.5% of Afghanistan's erstwhile population of 13.5 million people is estimated to have been killed over the course of the conflict. The Soviet–Afghan War caused grave destruction throughout Afghanistan and has also been cited by scholars as a significant factor that contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, formally ending the Cold War. It is also commonly referred to as "the Soviet Union's Vietnam".
A resistance movement is an organized group of people that tries to resist the government or an occupying power, causing disruption and unrest in civil order and stability. Such a movement may seek to achieve its goals through either the use of violent or nonviolent resistance, or the use of force, whether armed or unarmed. In many cases, as for example in the United States during the American Revolution, or in Norway in the Second World War, a resistance movement may employ both violent and non-violent methods, usually operating under different organizations and acting in different phases or geographical areas within a country.
The Reagan Doctrine was a United States strategy implemented by the Reagan Administration to overwhelm the global influence of the Soviet Union in the late Cold War. As stated by US President Ronald Reagan in his State of the Union address on February 6, 1985: "We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth." The doctrine was a centerpiece of United States foreign policy from the early 1980s until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
Sibghatullah Mojaddedi was an Afghan politician, who served as Acting President after the fall of Mohammad Najibullah's government in April 1992. He was the first leader to call for armed resistance against the Soviet-backed regime in 1979 and founded the Afghan National Liberation Front at the time; later becoming a respected figure among the various Afghan mujahideen. He served as the chairman of the 2003 loya jirga that approved Afghanistan's new constitution. In 2005, he was appointed chairman of the Meshrano Jirga, upper house of the National Assembly of Afghanistan, and was reappointed as a member in 2011. He also served on the Afghan High Peace Council. Mojaddedi is considered to have been a moderate leader.
A partisan is a member of a domestic irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity.
The Fourth Balochistan Conflict was a four-year military conflict in Balochistan, the largest province of Pakistan, between the Pakistan Army and Baloch separatists and tribesmen that lasted from 1973 to 1977.
The 1989–1992 Afghan Civil War, also known as the FirstAfghan 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.
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The mujahideen were also supported by Britain's MI6, who conducted their own separate covert actions. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups, including groups with jihadist ties, that were favored by the regime of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in neighboring Pakistan, rather than other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the Soviet-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan administration since before the Soviet intervention.
The Afghan mujahideen were Islamist resistance groups that fought against the Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War and the subsequent First Afghan Civil War.
Mujahideen, or Mujahidin, is the plural form of mujahid, an Arabic term that broadly refers to people who engage in jihad, interpreted in a jurisprudence of Islam as the fight on behalf of God, religion or the community (ummah).
Anti-Soviet partisans may refer to various resistance movements that opposed the Soviet Union and its satellite states at various periods during the 20th century.
Lithuanian partisans were partisans who waged guerrilla warfare in Lithuania against the Soviet Union in 1944–1953. Similar anti-Soviet resistance groups, also known as Forest Brothers and cursed soldiers, fought against Soviet rule in Estonia, Latvia and Poland. An estimated total of 30,000 Lithuanian partisans and their supporters were killed. The Lithuanian partisan war lasted almost for a decade, thus becoming one of the longest partisan wars in Europe.
The history of guerrilla warfare stretches back to ancient history. While guerrilla tactics can be viewed as a natural continuation of prehistoric warfare, the Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu, in his The Art of War, was the earliest to propose the use of guerrilla warfare. This directly inspired the development of modern guerrilla warfare. Communist leaders like Mao Zedong and North Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh both implemented guerrilla warfare in the style of Sun Tzu, which served as a model for similar strategies elsewhere, such as the Cuban "foco" theory and the anti-Soviet Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. While the tactics of modern guerrilla warfare originate in the 20th century, irregular warfare, using elements later characteristic of modern guerrilla warfare, has existed throughout the battles of many ancient civilizations.
The Battle of Arghandab was an offensive launched by Afghan government forces, supported by Soviet troops, against mujahideen strongholds in the Arghandab District of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, in 1987. The operation ended in failure, and the government forces withdrew after suffering heavy losses.
Ismatullah Muslim, also called Ismatullah Achakzai or just Ismat, was an Afghan militia leader, who in 1979 joined the mujahideen opposed to the communist PDPA and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, before coming over to the side of the government in 1984. Despite his military successes, Ismatullah Muslim was known for the many abuses he committed against civilians, made him a much hated figure throughout Afghanistan, except within his own tribe.
Dr. Zabihullah Mojaddidy is an Afghan politician. He served as the Governor of Kabul Province between July 2009 and until resigning in March 2011. His resignation was due to a lack of support from development ministries and the Presidential Palace in regard to his ideas for the reconstruction of Kabul City. Prior to becoming governor, he served as the Deputy Minister of Higher Education.
The guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an insurgency waged by Baltic partisans against the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1956. Known alternatively as the "Forest Brothers", the "Brothers of the Wood" and the "Forest Friars", these partisans fought against invading Soviet forces during their occupation of the Baltic states during and after World War II. Similar insurgent groups resisted Soviet occupations in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.
During the Soviet–Afghan War, there was a large amount of foreign involvement. The Afghan mujahidin were backed primarily by Pakistan, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom making it a Cold War proxy war. Pakistani forces trained the mujahidin rebels while the U.S. and Saudi Arabia offered the greatest financial support. However, private donors and religious charities throughout the Muslim world—particularly in the Persian Gulf—raised considerably more funds for the Afghan rebels than any foreign government; Jason Burke recounts that "as little as 25 per cent of the money for the Afghan jihad was actually supplied directly by states." Saudi Arabia was heavily involved in the war effort and matched the United States' contributions dollar-for-dollar in public funds. Saudi Arabia also gathered an enormous amount of money for the Afghan mujahidin in private donations that amounted to about $20 million per month at their peak. Other countries that supported the Mujahideen were Egypt, China, West Germany, France, Turkey, Japan and even Israel, Iran on the other hand only supported the Shia Mujahideen, namely the Persian speaking Shiite Hazaras in a limited way. One of these groups was the Tehran Eight, a political union of Afghan Shi'a. They were supplied predominately by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but Iran's support for the Hazaras nevertheless frustrated efforts for a united Mujahidin front.
Though not officially a belligerent during the Soviet–Afghan War, the United Kingdom was heavily involved, playing a key covert role in the conflict. Also known as the Second Great Game, the British provided both indirect and direct support for the Afghan mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet Union, including secretly arming, funding and supplying various factions. Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) primarily supported the Mujahideen group Jamiat-e Islami, commanded by Ahmad Shah Massoud who, having received little support from the US and Pakistan, became Britain's key ally in the conflict. Fighting in the Panjshir valley, Massoud and his fighters with British support and intelligence, overcame nine Soviet offensives and held out up to the Soviet withdrawal from the vital valley in 1986. Massoud became the most successful and feared out of any of the Mujahideen commanders.
