3
The Development of Afghan
Resistance
If there was one thing predictable following the Soviet invasion, it
was that Soviet forces would encounter significant popular resist-
ance. What was unclear was just how significant that resistance
would be, how well-organised, how sustainable, how determined.
However, there were grounds at the outset for the Soviet leadership
to be pessimistic. In his great treatise On War, published posthu-
mously in 1832, Carl von Clausewitz had analysed the circum-
stances under which what he called ‘a general uprising’ could be
effective, and identified five preconditions: that the war ‘must be
fought in the interior of the country’; that it ‘must not be decided
by a single stroke’; that the ‘theatre of operations must be fairly
large’; that the ‘national character must be suited to that type of
war’; and that the ‘country must be rough and inaccessible,
because of mountains, or forests, marches, or the local methods of
cultivation’ (Clausewitz, 1984: 480). The parallels with the situ-
ation in Afghanistan in 1980 are almost perfect.
This chapter explores the nature of the Afghan resistance in
more detail. It is divided into three sections. The first deals with
the character of resistance forces in Afghanistan, and the circum-
stances which sustained resistance activities. The second section
deals with the role played by Pakistan as a pivotal neighbouring
state in providing operating bases for some resistance groups, and
hospitality for millions of Afghan refugees. The third deals with
the wider support which the struggle of the Afghans received from
an increasingly engaged world. The Afghan resistance was a