Search the Community

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/27/10-myths-about-afghanistan Skip to main content The Guardian homeworldeuropeUSamericasasiaaustraliaafricamiddle eastcitiesdevelopmentUKsportfootballopinionculturebusinesslifestylefashionenvironmenttechtravel all Afghanistan 10 myths about Afghanistan In 1988, the Soviet army left Afghanistan after a concerted campaign by the western-backed mujahideen. But since then, many enduring myths have grown up about the war-torn country. In his new book, Jonathan Steele sorts the fact from the fiction Soviet troops prepare to leave Kabul on 25 April 1988. But did the mujahideen actually drive them out? Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images Jonathan Steele Tuesday 27 September 2011 19.59 BSTLast modified on Wednesday 1 October 201412.26 BST Share on PinterestShare on LinkedInShare on Google+Share on WhatsApp 378 Save for later 1. Afghans have always beaten foreign armies, from Alexander the Great to modern times Afghan history is certainly littered with occasions when foreign invaders were humiliated. But there have also been many cases when foreign armies penetrated the country and inflicted major defeats. In 330BC, Alexander the Great marched through the area of central Asia that is nowAfghanistan, meeting little opposition. More than a millennium later, the Mongol leader Genghis Khan also brushed resistance aside. Since Afghanistan emerged as a modern state, there have been three wars with Britain. The British invasion of 1839 produced initial victory for the intruders followed by stunning defeat followed by a second victory. In 1878, the British invaded again. Though they suffered a major defeat at Maiwand, their main army beat the Afghans. The British then re-drew the frontier of British India up to the Khyber Pass, and Afghanistan had to cede various frontier areas. In the Third Anglo-Afghan war, the fighting was launched by the Afghans. Amanullah Khan sent troops into British India in 1919. Within a month they were forced to retreat, in part because British planes bombed Kabul in one of the first displays of airpower in central Asia. The war ended in tactical victory for the British but their troop losses were twice those of the Afghans, suggesting the war was a strategic defeat. The British abandoned control of Afghan foreign policy at last. Sign up to our Bookmarks newsletter Read more The results of the three Anglo-Afghan wars undermine the claim that Afghans always defeat foreigners. What is true is that foreigners have always had a hard time occupying the country for long. The British came to understand that. From bitter experience they kept their interventions short, preferring domination over foreign affairs to the option of colonisation that they adopted in India. 2. The Soviet invasion led to a civil war and western aid for the Afghan resistance Armed opposition to the government in Kabul long pre-dated the arrival of Soviet troops in December 1979. Every one of the Pakistan-based Afghan mujahideen leaders who became famous during the 1980s as the Peshawar Seven and were helped by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China had gone into exile and taken up arms before December 1979, many of them years earlier. As Islamists, they opposed the secular and modernising tendencies of Daoud Khan, [the Afghan PM] who toppled his cousin, King Zahir Shah, in 1973. Western backing for these rebels had also begun before Soviet troops arrived. It served western propaganda to say the Russians had no justification for entering Afghanistan in what the west called an aggressive land grab. In fact, US officials saw an advantage in the mujahedin rebellion which grew after a pro-Moscow government toppled Daoud in April 1978. In his memoirs, Robert Gates, then a CIA official and later defence secretary under Presidents Bush and Obama, recounts a staff meeting in March 1979 where CIA officials asked whether they should keep the mujahideen going, thereby "sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire". The meeting agreed to fund them to buy weapons. 3. The USSR suffered a massive military defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of the mujahideen This is one of the most persistent myths of Afghan history. It has been trumpeted by every former mujahideen leader, fromOsama bin Laden and Taliban commanders to the warlords in the current Afghan government. It is also accepted unthinkingly as part of the western narrative of the war. Some western politicians go so far as to say that the alleged Soviet defeat in Afghanistan helped to cause the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. On this they agree with Bin Laden and al-Qaida's other leaders, who claim they destroyed one superpower and are on their way to destroying another. The reality is the Afghan mujahideen did not defeat the Soviets on the battlefield. They won some important encounters, notably in the Panjshir valley, but lost others. In sum, neither side defeated the other. The Soviets could have remained in Afghanistan for several more years but they decided to leave when Gorbachev calculated that the war had become a stalemate and was no longer worth the high price in men, money and international prestige. In private, US officials came to the same conclusion about Soviet strength, although they only admitted it publicly later. Morton Abramowitz, who directed the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the time, said in 1997: "In 1985, there was a real concern that the [mujahideen] were losing, that they were sort of being diminished, falling apart. Losses were high and their impact on the Soviets was not great." 4. The CIA's supply of Stinger missiles to the mujahideen forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan This myth of the 1980s was given new life by George Crile's 2003 book Charlie Wilson's War and the 2007 film of the same name, starring Tom Hanks as the loud-mouthed congressman from Texas. Both book and movie claim that Wilson turned the tide of the war by persuading Ronald Reagan to supply the mujahideen with shoulder-fired missiles that could shoot down helicopters. The Stingers certainly forced a shift in Soviet tactics. Helicopter crews switched their operations to night raids since the mujahideen had no night-vision equipment. Pilots made bombing runs at greater height, thereby diminishing the accuracy of the attacks, but the rate of Soviet and Afghan aircraft losses did not change significantly from what it was in the first six years of the war. The Soviet decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was made in October 1985, several months before Stinger missiles entered Afghanistan in significant quantities in the autumn of 1986. None of the secret Politburo discussions that have since been declassified mentioned the Stingers or any other shift in mujahideen equipment as the reason for the policy change from indefinite occupation to preparations for retreat. 5. After the Soviets withdrew, the west walked away One of the most common promises western politicians made after they toppled theTaliban in 2001 was that "this time" the west would not walk away, "as we did after the Russians pulled out". Afghans were surprised to hear these promises. They remembered history in rather a different way. Far from forgetting about Afghanistan in February 1989, the US showed no let-up in its close involvement with the mujahideen. Washington blocked the Soviet-installed President Mohammad Najibullah's offers of concessions and negotiations and continued to arm the rebels and jihadis in the hope they would quickly overthrow his Moscow-backed regime. This was one of the most damaging periods in recent Afghan history when the west and Pakistan, along with mujahideen intransigence, undermined the best chance of ending the country's civil war. The overall effect of these policies was to prolong and deepen Afghanistan's destruction, as Charles Cogan, CIA director of operations for the Middle East and south Asia, 19791984, later recognised. "I question whether we should have continued on this momentum, this inertia of aiding the mujahideen after the Soviets had left. I think that was probably, in retrospect, a mistake," he said. 6. The mujahideen overthrew Kabul's regime and won a major victory over Moscow The key factor that undermined Najibullah was an announcement made in Moscow in September 1991, shortly after a coup mounted against Gorbachev by Soviet hard-liners collapsed. His longtime rival, Boris Yeltsin, who headed the Russian government, emerged in a dominant position. Yeltsin was determined to cut back on the country's international commitments and his government announced that from 1 January 1992, no more arms would be delivered to Kabul. Supplies of petrol, food and all other aid would also cease. The decision was catastrophic for the morale of Najibullah's supporters. The regime had survived the departure of Soviet troops for more than two years but now would truly be alone. So, in one of the great ironies of history, it was Moscow that toppled the Afghan government that Moscow had sacrificed so many lives to keep in place. The dramatic policy switch became evident when Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of one of the mujahideen groups, was invited to Moscow in November 1991. In a statement after the meeting, Boris Pankin, the Soviet foreign minister, "confirmed the necessity for a complete transfer of state power to an interim Islamic government". In today's context, the announcement could be compared to an invitation by Hillary Clinton to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to come to Washington and a declaration the US wanted power transferred from Karzai to the Taliban. The move led to a wave of defections as several of Najibullah's army commanders and political allies switched sides and joined the mujahideen. Najibullah's army was not defeated. It just melted away. 7. The Taliban invited Osama bin Laden to use Afghanistan as a safe haven Osama bin Laden got to know the mujahideen leaders during the anti-Soviet jihad after traveling to Peshawar in 1980. Two years later, his construction company built tunnels in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan that the CIA helped him to finance and which he was later to use to escape US bombing after 9/11. He returned to Saudi Arabia, disillusioned with the Saudi royal family for collaborating with the US in the Gulf war against Saddam Hussein in 19901991. In Afghanistan, there was cause for disappointment too. The mujahideen's incompetence was preventing them from toppling Najibullah. Bin Laden turned his attention to jihad against the west and moved to Sudan in 1992. After Sudan came under pressure to deport him in 1996, Bin Laden had to find somewhere else to live. Najibullah had finally lost power in Afghanistan, and Bin Laden decided it might be the best place after all. His return in May 1996 was prompted less by a revival of interest in Afghan politics than by his need for a safe haven. His return was sponsored by the mujahideen leaders with whom he had become friendly during the anti-Soviet struggle. He flew to Jalalabad on a plane chartered by Rabbani's government that also carried scores of Arab fighters. It was only after the Taliban captured Jalalabad from the mujahideen that he was obliged to switch his allegiance or leave Afghanistan again. He chose the first option. 8. The Taliban were by far the worst government Afghanistan has ever had A year after the Taliban seized power, I interviewed UN staff, foreign aid workers and Afghans in Kabul. The Taliban had softened their ban on girls' education and were turning a blind eye to the expansion of informal "home schools" in which thousands of girls were being taught in private flats. The medical faculty was about to re-open for women to teach midwives, nurses, and doctors since women patients could not be treated by men. The ban on women working outside the home was also lifted for war widows and other needy women. Afghans recalled the first curbs on liberty were imposed by the mujahideen before the Taliban. From 1992, cinemas were closed and TV films were shortened so as to remove any scene in which women and men walked or talked together, let alone touched each other. Women announcers were banned from TV. The burqa was not compulsory, as it was to become under the Taliban, but all women had to wear the head-scarf, or hijab, unlike in the years of Soviet occupation and the Najibullah regime that followed. The mujahideen refused to allow women to attend the UN's fourth world conference on women in Beijing in 1995. Crime was met with the harshest punishment. A wooden gallows was erected in a park near the main bazaar in Kabul where convicts were hanged in public. Above all, Afghans liked the security provided by the Taliban in contrast to the chaos between 1992 and 1996 when mujahideen groups fought over the capital, launching shells and rockets indiscriminately. Some 50,000 Kabulis were killed. 9. The Taliban are uniquely harsh oppressors of Afghan women Afghanistan has a long history of honour killings and honour mutilation, going back before the Taliban period and continuing until today. They occur in every part of the country and are not confined to the culture of the Pashtun, the ethnic group from which most Taliban come. Women are brutalised by a tribal custom for settling disputes known as baad, which treats young girls as voiceless commodities. They are offered in compensation to another family, often to an elderly man, for unpaid debts or if a member of that family has been killed by a relative of the girl. On the wider issue of gender rights, the Taliban are rightly accused of relegating Afghan women to second-class citizenship. But to single the Taliban out as uniquely oppressive is not accurate. Violence against women has a long pedigree in all communities in Afghanistan, among the Shia Hazara and the northern Tajiks, as well as the Sunni Pashtun. Underage marriage is common across Afghanistan, and among all ethnic groups. According to Unifem (the United Nations Development Fund for Women) and the Afghan independent human rights commission, 57% of Afghan marriages are child marriages where one partner is under the age of 16. In a study of 200 underage wives, 40% had been married between the ages of 10 and 13, 32.5% at 14, and 27.5% at 15. In many communities, women are banned from leaving the house or family compound. This leads to a host of other disabilities. Women are not allowed to take jobs. Girls are prevented from going to school. In the minds of western politicians and the media, these prohibitions are often associated exclusively with the Taliban. Yet the forced isolation of women by keeping them confined is a deep-seated part of Afghan rural culture. It is also found in poorer parts of the major cities. 10. The Taliban have little popular support In 2009, Britain's Department for International Development commissioned an Afghan NGO to conduct surveys on how people compared the Taliban to the Afghan government. The results suggested Nato's campaign to demonise the Taliban was no more effective than the Soviet effort to demonise the mujahedin. One survey reported on Helmandis' attitudes to justice systems. More than half the male respondents called the Taliban "completely trustworthy and fair". The Taliban took money through taxes on farm crops and road tolls but did not demand bribes. According to the survey, "Most ordinary people associate the [national] government with practices and behaviours they dislike: the inability to provide security, dependence on foreign military, eradication of a basic livelihood crop (poppy), and as having a history of partisanship (the perceived preferential treatment of Northerners)." Does the US understand why Afghans join the Taliban? Do Afghans understand why the US is in their country? Without clear answers, no counter-insurgency strategy can succeed. A 2009 survey commissioned by DFID in three key provinces asked what led people to join the Taliban. Out of 192 who responded, only 10 supported the government. The rest saw it as corrupt and partisan. Most supported the Taliban, at least what they called the "good Taliban", defined as those who showed religious piety, attacked foreign forces but not Afghans and delivered justice quickly and fairly. They did not like Pakistani Taliban and Taliban linked to narcotics. Afghans did not like al-Qaida, but did not equate the Taliban with this Arab-led movement. More featuresTopicsAfghanistan Taliban Russia Osama bin Laden History South and Central Asia Share on PinterestShare on LinkedInShare on Google+Share on WhatsApp Save for later more on this story Karzai rules out more Taliban negotiations 1 Oct 2011 Karzai rules out more Taliban negotiations Pro-Taliban leader captured in Afghanistan 1 Oct 2011 Pro-Taliban leader captured in Afghanistan 'Car bombs and suicide bombers were unknown in Soviet-era Kabul' 27 Sep 2011 'Car bombs and suicide bombers were unknown in Soviet-era Kabul' comments This discussion is closed for comments. Order by Oldest Threads Collapsed 1 2 3 4 15 next Mauryan 27 Sep 2011 13:19 106107 Recent Afghan history is built on lies repeated a thousand times over. No one has taken the effort to truly understand the real events that happened. Myths have been propagated by various parties and it has snowballed into a false claim of David bringing down the Goliath. Thanks for the article. The real villain behind the issues in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal is Pakistani military. Hopefully the truth about its involvement and influence on the destiny of Afghanistan needs to be spelled out in clear terms. Too much myths and lies have been used to cover it all up. There is no need to hesitate in calling a spade a spade. Report jamesoverseas 27 Sep 2011 14:18 179180 The reality is the Afghan mujahideen did not defeat the Soviets on the battlefield So what? The Taliban will never defeat NATO on the battlefield either, but when NATO troops are withdrawn it will be felt as a NATO defeat by all sides. Just as Soviet Citizens felt that the Soviet Union had been defeated. If you were familiar with Russian culture you would know that Russians at all levels of society felt Afghanistan as a defeat (you still see a lot of men of that age on the streets without limbs, begging in their uniforms) - something that is reflected in the local films made about it. You might want to watch 9 Rota by Fyodor Bondarchuk. Some western politicians go so far as to say that the alleged Soviet defeat in Afghanistan helped to cause the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. I wouldn't disagree with this view. Given that it was a conscript army that was made up of ordinary society that took the casulties, it certainly fueled the feeling in society that it was ruled by a bunch of old men that didn't care about society. Report Close report comment form Please select Personal abuse Off topic Legal issue Trolling Hate speech Offensive/Threatening language Copyright Spam Other Reason (optional) Email (optional) Report View more comments popular back to top homeUKsportfootballopinionculturebusinesslifestylefashionenvironmenttechtravel all world afghanistan daily email sign upfacebooktwitterall topicsall contributorssolve technical issuecomplaints & correctionsterms & conditionsprivacy policycookie policysecuredrop © 2015 guardian news and media limited or its affiliated companies. all rights reserved.

surprised to even see Sikhs on these forums hyping up afghans specifically Pashtuns as if their invincible also this is a reply to the threads started by azaz in reply to azad67 and pashtunhistory website he's posted on sikhsangat if you go into history section and search for afghan-Sikh wars you'll see what im talkin gabout their are about 21 million Sikhs today their are about 45 million pashtuns 15 million of which live in Afghanistan and 30 million of which live in pakistan the 30 million that live Pakistan do so cause their ancestors were conquered by the sikhs now it was only half of the Sikhs ancestors so about 10 million of the Sikhs ancestors who conquered the 30 million Pashtuns ancestors considering malwa was not part of the Sikh empire and make up 50% of the Sikh population going further I love how the news media twist facts around and cherry pick facts to dramatize the news to gety more ratings just like boxing and mma promotors cherry pick things to dramatise boxing matches and fights to get more pay per view sell One major myth and how media has twisted things around to make the afghan war more dramatic is how media has cherry picked facts about Afghanistan not being conquered Afghanistan was created in mid 1700's before then the region that is called Afghanistan today and Pashtuns were always being put under somebodies rule an was being invaded an conquered alexander the great then the biharis from Bihar india the poorest state in india but when the biharis had the maryan empire they had conquered afghanistan then the arabs conquered afganistan and spread islam and probably by the sword then the mongolions conquered afghanistan then the turksmen conquered afghanistan then Mughals conquered the pashtuns then the turk king nadir shah who ruled iran went and conquered Afghanistan and pashtun but after that nadir shah's top general who was a Pashtun was given was is today called Afghanistan and that is when Afghanistan is created more then half the Pashtuns were conquered by the sikhs then the british east indian company who at its peak had the largesty mercenary army ever with it being about 96% indian aka sepoys is what indian soldiers of the british east indian army were called and 96% of the british east indian company were indian soldiers hence it was Indians who helped England take india cause the british out smarted by britis politically and strategically and militarily same thing happened in Africa the Europeans used Africans to conquer and enslave other Africans for them cause the European soldiers had a hard time fighting in Africa cause the diseases killed them and the Africans were pretty nutts which freaked a lot of the European soldiers out in the first anglo afghan war almost all the soldiers fighting for british east india company fighting were muslim Bengali aka todays bangledeshis the british east indian company with their Bengali mercenaries doing 98% of the work defeated the afghans and won every battle in the first anglo afghan war only purpose of conquering Afghanistan was to use it as a bumper between india and russia otherwise Afghanistan was extremely poor and of no interest for the british east india company after conquering Afghanistan british east indian company was losing a lot of money an found Afghanistan to be a financial liability and british east indian company was a corporation driven by profit the british east india company to cut their loses in Afghanistan when it cam to money had cut the military budget in Afghanistan big time and only left about 4000 Bengali british east indian soldiers with couple of English officers who commanded them and about 12 000 civilians which were the wives and children of the Bengali soldiers now this allowed afghans to rebel and outnumber the Bengalis big time an that is when the retreat of Kabul happened were the Pashtuns brutually outnumbered the Bengali soldiers and civilians and slaughtered with only an English doctor surviving and making it to india afghans pump this up as if it was a major military battle win or something in reality it was them out numbering and catching the soldiers and their fams off guard but cause Afghanistan was needed when Britain got india the british decided to go for Afghanistan again and again the british indian army now consisting of gorkha and Sikh regiment soldiers invaded Afghanistan again and like the first anglo afghan war the british indian army won every battle with gorkhas and Sikhs fighting the battles and Afghanistan surrendered but instead of putting a puppet govt in charge the british allowed the king of Afghanistan to remain king but the british would control their army and foreign policies and use their army as a road block between Afghanistan and india cause of afghanistans poverty the british didn't want to rule Afghanistan and lose money in such a poor country so Afghanistan came under imperial rule of the british third ango afghan war took off after world war 1 and again the british indian army after coming back from world war 1 crushed the afghans in every battle and won the war but after 1917 Russia revolution Russia was no longer a threat and Britain let go of Afghanistan as they were no longer needed when soviets invaded they won every single battle soviets didn't invade to take over Afghanistan they only came in to back the afghan govt and did this so all the puppet communist govts in other countries knew the soviets had all their backs soviets won ever battle an after soviets left the afghan govt lasted another 3 years but cause of their atheist beliefs and communist connections 98% of afghans from hazaras tajiks Pashtuns uzbeks rejected the afghan govt again war on terror the west has won every battle in afghanistan thing is the west is hoping to defeat Taliban ideology by giving Afghanistan and Pashtuns an opportunity to prosper with a democratic govt same tacts the Americans used to finish off the Nazi ideology in Germany and japands ideology after ww2 unfortanatly the Pashtuns want to remain stuck in 12th century an it costs money for the west to kick their butts over and over again and the west is held to a higher moral standard so they can't exploit Afghanistan and so they can't make money off of Afghanistan and are only losing money each time they kick the day lights out of talibon with Germany and japan they economically developed and American companies were able to make money after world war 2 exporting American goods to those countries to help them rebuild Pashtuns just refuse to progress hence why the west can't accomplish their mission of killing Taliban ideology