the United States and in NATO would have surely found another pretext to aggra-
vate the situation in the world....
SOURCE: “Islamic Parleys on Afghan Crisis,” Historic Documents of 1980(Washington, D.C.: CQ Press,
1981), 9–15.Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
The Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan lasted slightly more than eight years,
causing a large number of deaths and widespread destruction in Afghanistan and con-
tributing to the demise of the Soviet Union. Kremlin officials had hoped that the mil-
itary intervention would bolster the weak communist regime in Afghanistan and ensure
the continued existence of a friendly power along part of its long southern border.
Those goals could be achieved only as long as Moscow provided direct support for the
government in Kabul. Once that support was withdrawn, after the collapse of the
Soviet Union at the end of 1991, all semblance of communist government in
Afghanistan disappeared, and a new era of chaos began.
After the December 1979 invasion, the Soviet Union installed a new government
headed by Babrak Karmal, the leader of one of two factions of the Afghan commu-
nist party. Karmal put his own allies in key positions in the new government, but nei-
ther he nor the Soviet army were able to make much progress toward defeating an
antigovernment insurgency that had been gaining strength since early 1979. The
Kremlin replaced Karmal in May 1986 with Muhammad Najibullah, a former head
of the Afghan secret police. Najibullah changed the country’s name from the Demo-
cratic Republic of Afghanistan to the Republic of Afghanistan and offered the insur-
gents, or mujahidin,tentative concessions, such as conceding a greater role for Islam
in society. They rejected his offers.
Aid to the Mujahidin
The battle for Afghanistan during the 1980s was a classic guerrilla war except for one
major factor—the absence of a united antigovernment guerrilla army with a single
political agenda. Instead, the anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan consisted of dozens
of local guerrilla commanders, some of whom were affiliated with but not necessarily
controlled by a coalition of seven political parties headquartered in the city of
580 AFGHANISTAN