Afghan War: 1978-1992 Afghan War, in The History of Afghanistan, The Internal Conflict That Began in 1978 Between

Afghan War
1978–1992
Afghan War, in the history of Afghanistan, the internal conflict that began in 1978 between
anticommunist Islamic guerrillas and the Afghan communist government (aided in 1979–89
by Soviet troops), leading to the overthrow of the government in 1992. More broadly, the
term also encompasses military activity within Afghanistan after 1992—but apart from
the Afghanistan War (2001–14), a U.S.-led invasion launched in response to the September
11 attacks on the United States in 2001. By this broader definition, many analysts consider
the internal Afghan War as lasting well into the 21st century and overlapping with the U.S.-
led Afghanistan War.
Insurgency against communist rule (1978–92)
The roots of the war lay in the overthrow of the centrist government of
President Mohammad Daud Khan in April 1978 by left-wing military officers led by Nur
Mohammad Taraki. Power was thereafter shared by two Marxist-Leninist political groups,
the People’s (Khalq) Party and the Banner (Parcham) Party, which had earlier emerged from
a single organization, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and had reunited in an
uneasy coalition shortly before the coup. The new government, which had little popular
support, forged close ties with the Soviet Union, launched ruthless purges of all domestic
opposition, and began extensive land and social reforms that were bitterly resented by the
devoutly Muslim and largely anticommunist population. Insurgencies arose against the
government among both tribal and urban groups, and all of these—known collectively as
the mujahideen (Arabic mujāhidūn, “those who engage in jihad”)—were Islamic in
orientation. These uprisings, along with internal fighting and coups within the government
between the People’s and Banner factions, prompted the Soviets to invade the country in
December 1979, sending in some 30,000 troops and toppling the short-lived presidency of
People’s leader Hafizullah Amin. The aim of the Soviet operation was to prop up their new
but faltering client state, now headed by Banner leader Babrak Karmal, but the mujahideen
rebellion grew in response, spreading to all parts of the country. The Soviets initially left the
suppression of the rebellion to the Afghan army, but the latter was beset by mass desertions
and remained largely ineffective throughout the war.
The Afghan War quickly settled down into a stalemate, with about 100,000 Soviet troops
controlling the cities, larger towns, and major garrisons and the mujahideen moving with
relative freedom throughout the countryside. Soviet troops tried to crush the insurgency by
various tactics, but the guerrillas generally eluded their attacks. The Soviets then attempted
to eliminate the mujahideen’s civilian support by bombing and depopulating the rural areas.
These tactics sparked a massive flight from the countryside; by 1982 some 2.8 million
Afghans had sought asylum in Pakistan, and another 1.5 million had fled to Iran. The
mujahideen were eventually able to neutralize Soviet air power through the use of
shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles supplied by the Soviet Union’s Cold War adversary,
the United States.
The mujahideen were fragmented politically into a handful of independent groups, and their
military efforts remained uncoordinated throughout the war. The quality of their arms and
combat organization gradually improved, however, owing to experience and to the large
quantity of arms and other war matériel shipped to the rebels, via Pakistan, by the United
States and other countries and by sympathetic Muslims from throughout the world. In
addition, an indeterminate number of Muslim volunteers—popularly termed “Afghan-
Arabs,” regardless of their ethnicity—traveled from all parts of the world to join the
opposition.
The war in Afghanistan became a quagmire for what by the late 1980s was a disintegrating
Soviet Union. (The Soviets suffered some 15,000 dead and many more injured.) In 1988 the
United States, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union signed an agreement by which
the latter would withdraw its troops (completed in 1989), and Afghanistan returned to
nonaligned status. In April 1992 various rebel groups, together with newly rebellious
government troops, stormed the besieged capital of Kabul and overthrew the communist
president, Najibullah, who had succeeded Karmal in 1986.
Conflict after 1992
A transitional government, sponsored by various rebel factions, proclaimed an Islamic
republic, but jubilation was short-lived. President Burhanuddin Rabbani, leader of the
Islamic Society (Jamʿiyyat-e Eslāmī), a major mujahideen group, refused to leave office in
accordance with the power-sharing arrangement reached by the new government. Other
mujahideen groups, particularly the Islamic Party (Ḥezb-e Eslāmī), led by Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, surrounded Kabul and began to barrage the city with artillery and rockets.
These attacks continued intermittently over the next several years as the countryside
outside Kabul slipped into chaos.
Partly as a response, the Taliban (Pashto: “Students”), a puritanical Islamic group led by a
former mujahideen commander, Mohammad Omar, emerged in the fall of 1994 and
systematically seized control of the country, occupying Kabul in 1996. The Taliban—
augmented by volunteers from various Islamic extremist groups sheltering in Afghanistan,
many of whom were Afghan-Arab holdovers from the earlier conflict—soon controlled all
but a small portion of northern Afghanistan, which was held by a loose coalition of
mujahideen forces known as the Northern Alliance. Fighting continued at a stalemate until
2001, when the Taliban refused demands by the U.S. government to extradite Saudi Arabian
exile Osama bin Laden, the leader of an Islamic extremist group, al-Qaeda, which had close
ties with the Taliban and was accused of having launched terrorist attacks against the United
States, including the group of devastating strikes on September 11. Subsequently, U.S.
special operations forces, allied with Northern Alliance fighters, launched a series of military
operations in Afghanistan that drove the Taliban from power by early December.
(See Afghanistan War.) After a period of transitional interim government, a republic was
established in 2004, but the new government struggled well into the 21st century to secure
centralized authority over the country against a powerful Taliban insurgency.
Casualties and repercussions
Afghanistan has never conducted a full census, and it is thus difficult to gauge the number of
casualties suffered in the country since the outbreak of fighting. The best estimates
available indicate that some 1.5 million Afghanis were killed before 1992—although the
number killed during combat and the number killed as an indirect result of the conflict
remain unclear. The casualty rate after 1992 is even less precise. Many thousands were
killed as a direct result of factional fighting; hundreds or thousands of prisoners and civilians
were executed by tribal, ethnic, or religious rivals; and a large number of combatants—and
some noncombatants—were killed during the U.S. offensive. Moreover, tens of thousands
died of starvation or of a variety of diseases, many of which in less-troubled times could
have been easily treated, and hundreds of thousands were killed or injured by the
numerous land mines in the country. (Afghanistan was, by the end of the 20th century, one
of the most heavily mined countries in the world, and vast quantities of unexploded
ordnance littered the countryside.) The number of Afghan refugees living abroad fluctuated
over the years with the fighting and reached a peak of some six million people in the late
1980s.

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