Just finished Ghost Wars by Steve Coll. The book covers the wars in Afghanistan from 1980 to 2001. And those Pullitzer prize guys are pretty smart because this was a good book. If you are looking for an in depth summary of the wars this is a good book. If you don't have 6 weeks to plow through it the "can't-do-the-book-justice" highlights are below.
The big players in Afghanistsan in the 80s were the USSR, the Pakistanis, Americans, and Saudis. Here's a short summary of the geopolitics in the 80s:
-The Soviets wanted to both prop up the communist government in AFG and expand their influence in the oil-rich Middle East. The USSR is a land power and like all land powers it is highly insecure about it's borders. So the buffer states are key pieces of terrain for them.
-Pakistan didn't want the Soviets so close and it needed resources to fight India in Kashmir.
-The US just wanted to kill Soviets.
-The Saudi wanted to expand their influence in the Islamic world. So they sent money and fighters and built religious madrasas in the region.
After the Soviet invasion, Pakistan, the US, and the Saudi interest coaleseced into a loose "alliance" that supported mujahadeen factions. This is were it gets complicated. Pakistan picked mujadeen commanders they thought they could control in the interests of Pakistan. US policy, in retrospect, naively allowed Pakistan to divvy out support to the commanders. This prevented some of the more "moderate" commanders from gaining significant power in the conflict. The Saudis poured money and volunteers into the fight as well. Many of the madrasas supported by the Saudis began to radiclize based on teachings of a few key Islamic scholars of the day. This is when a wealthy young sheik named Osama Bin-Laden (UBL) entered the fray. The result was a guerrilla war fought by a shifting array of factions that eventually expelled the Soviets.
But when the Soviets left the fighting didn't stop. After the withdrawal the US simply lost interest in the region. Pakistan, however, was still keenly interested in placing a "pro-Pakistan" government in place. To that end it pushed various mujahadeen commanders to continue fighting for power. The war intensified. Eventually Pakistan funded an extreme Islamist group known as the Taliban who successfully controlled several major cities. UBL tapped into this new rising entity and quickly established his organization, Al Qaeda, as a solid Taliban ally in the ongoing war (several mujahadeen commanders continued to fight throughout the early 2000s). Of course UBL had bigger aspirations and used the resources and safe haven he had built in Afghanistan to eventually launch 9/11.
Just before September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda used a suicide bomber disguised as a reporter to kill a prominent mujahadeen commander named Massoud. Massoud was ardently anti-Taliban and perhaps Afghanistan's last hope for unified "moderate" government. When Hamid Karzai, then a small anti-Taliban leader, heard of Massoud's death his first words were, "What an unlucky country." Indeed.
The big players in Afghanistsan in the 80s were the USSR, the Pakistanis, Americans, and Saudis. Here's a short summary of the geopolitics in the 80s:
-The Soviets wanted to both prop up the communist government in AFG and expand their influence in the oil-rich Middle East. The USSR is a land power and like all land powers it is highly insecure about it's borders. So the buffer states are key pieces of terrain for them.
-Pakistan didn't want the Soviets so close and it needed resources to fight India in Kashmir.
-The US just wanted to kill Soviets.
-The Saudi wanted to expand their influence in the Islamic world. So they sent money and fighters and built religious madrasas in the region.
After the Soviet invasion, Pakistan, the US, and the Saudi interest coaleseced into a loose "alliance" that supported mujahadeen factions. This is were it gets complicated. Pakistan picked mujadeen commanders they thought they could control in the interests of Pakistan. US policy, in retrospect, naively allowed Pakistan to divvy out support to the commanders. This prevented some of the more "moderate" commanders from gaining significant power in the conflict. The Saudis poured money and volunteers into the fight as well. Many of the madrasas supported by the Saudis began to radiclize based on teachings of a few key Islamic scholars of the day. This is when a wealthy young sheik named Osama Bin-Laden (UBL) entered the fray. The result was a guerrilla war fought by a shifting array of factions that eventually expelled the Soviets.
But when the Soviets left the fighting didn't stop. After the withdrawal the US simply lost interest in the region. Pakistan, however, was still keenly interested in placing a "pro-Pakistan" government in place. To that end it pushed various mujahadeen commanders to continue fighting for power. The war intensified. Eventually Pakistan funded an extreme Islamist group known as the Taliban who successfully controlled several major cities. UBL tapped into this new rising entity and quickly established his organization, Al Qaeda, as a solid Taliban ally in the ongoing war (several mujahadeen commanders continued to fight throughout the early 2000s). Of course UBL had bigger aspirations and used the resources and safe haven he had built in Afghanistan to eventually launch 9/11.
Just before September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda used a suicide bomber disguised as a reporter to kill a prominent mujahadeen commander named Massoud. Massoud was ardently anti-Taliban and perhaps Afghanistan's last hope for unified "moderate" government. When Hamid Karzai, then a small anti-Taliban leader, heard of Massoud's death his first words were, "What an unlucky country." Indeed.
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