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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

Soviet Afghan War

Contents of this path:

Afghan Mujahideen fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan during the 1980s. The ensuing chaos among the well-armed rebel factions proved fertile ground for the eventual rise of the Taliban, which in turn played host to al-Qaeda. Now, more than 30 years after the CIA's initial intervention, the U.S. is withdrawing combat troops from a country that remains fragile and plagued with violence.
Afghan rebels, or mujahedeen, climb on a Soviet helicopter they shot down in 1981. U.S. assistance helped the rebels drive out the Soviet forces. But the chaotic conditions in Afghanistan allowed al-Qaeda to take root in the 1990s. Afghanistan: This major CIA operation spanned the 1980s, as the Afghan rebels, or mujahadeen, steadily chipped away at the occupying Soviet army. When the Soviets withdrew in 1989, it was considered a huge success and also seen as a factor in accelerating the Soviet Union's decline. But then the U.S. and everyone else abandoned Afghanistan
An Afghan guerrilla with a US-made Stinger anti-aircraft missile in this photo taken between November 1987 and January 1988. Pakistan also controlled which rebels received assistance: Of the seven mujahideen groups supported by Zia's government, four espoused Islamic fundamentalist beliefs—and these fundamentalists received most of the funding. Despite this, Carter has expressed no regrets over his decision to support what he still considers the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan
A mujahideen resistance fighter shoots an SA-7, 1988. The thrust of U.S. policy for the duration of the war was determined by Carter in early 1980: Carter initiated a program to arm the mujahideen through Pakistan's ISI and secured a pledge from Saudi Arabia to match U.S. funding for this purpose. U.S. support for the mujahideen accelerated under Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, at a final cost to U.S. taxpayers of some $3 billion. The decision to route U.S. aid through Pakistan led to massive fraud, as weapons sent to Karachi were frequently sold on the local market rather than delivered to the Afghan rebels; Karachi soon "became one of the most violent cities in the world."
President Reagan meeting with Afghan Mujahideen leaders in the Oval Office in 1983. Operation Cyclone was the codename 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 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
President Ronald Reagan gestures while talking to Burhaneddin Rabbani, a spokesman for the Afghan Resistance Alliance, at the White House in Washington, June 16, 1986. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken. Funding officially began with $695,000 in mid-1979, was increased dramatically to $20–$30 million per year in 1980, and rose to $630 million per year in 1987, described as the "biggest bequest to any Third World insurgency"
Afghan Girl is a 1984 photographic portrait of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee in Pakistan during the Soviet–Afghan War. Taken by American photojournalist Steve McCurry near the Pakistani city of Peshawar, famously appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. Gula's image became "emblematic" in some social circles as the "refugee girl/woman located in some distant camp" that was deserving of compassion from the Western viewer, and also as a symbol of Afghanistan to the West.
A Soviet officer shows off his American M16 acquired from Mujahideen fighters. Soviet-Afghan war, 1980s. The U.S. government has been criticized for allowing Pakistan to channel a disproportionate amount of its funding to the controversial Hekmatyar, whom Pakistani officials believed was "their man". Hekmatyar has been criticized for killing other mujahideen and attacking civilian populations, including shelling Kabul with American-supplied weapons, causing 2,000 casualties
Charlie Wilson meeting with Afghan Mujahideen fighters during the Soviet-Afghan War. Hekmatyar was said to be friendly with Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda, who was running an operation for assisting "Afghan Arab" volunteers fighting in Afghanistan, called Maktab al-Khadamat. Alarmed by his behavior, Pakistan leader General Zia warned Hekmatyar, "It was Pakistan that made him an Afghan leader and it is Pakistan who can equally destroy him if he continues to misbehave." The CIA and State Department have been criticized for publishing textbooks intended to indoctrinate children with racism and hatred towards foreigners and towards non-muslim Afghans.
Afghans killed by Soviet forces in the 1980s, after a raid on a caravan. Between 562,000 and 2,000,000 Afghans were killed and millions more fled the country as refugees, mostly to Pakistan and Iran. Between 6.5%–11.5% of Afghanistan's 1979 population of 13.5 million is estimated to have perished in the conflict. The war caused grave destruction in Afghanistan, and it has also been cited by scholars as a contributing factor to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.