in 1979–89, the country was torn by a lengthy
civil war. Both of these conflicts contributed to
the growth of heavily armed guerrilla militias and
forced 6 million Afghans to become reFUgees in
neighboring countries. The civil war ended with
the establishment of the extremist Islamic govern-
ment of the taliban in 1996. That government
was infamous for its brutal treatment of women,
persecution of religious minorities, and destruc-
tion of the famed colossal images of the Buddha
in Bamian (2001). The Taliban were removed by
force in late 2001, when the United States led
an international invasion and occupation of the
country as a consequence of the war on terror it
launched in the aftermath of the September 11,
2001 attacks by the al-qaida organization, which
was headquartered in Afghanistan. A constitution-
ally based transitional government with its capital
in Kabul has since been created, but the new
regime, known as the Transitional Islamic State
of Afghanistan (TISA), faces enormous challenges
to its legitimacy from powerful regional warlords,
opium drug traffickers, and Muslim guerrilla
forces.
See also aFghan mUJahidin; constitUtionalism;
persian langUage and literatUre.
Further reading: Larry P. Goodson, Afghanistan’s End-
less War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of
the Taliban (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
2001); Ahmed Rasheed, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and
Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 2001).
Afghan mujahidin
The Afghan mujahidin (warriors) are bands of
Muslim guerrillas who fought against the Soviet
occupation of aFghanistan in 1979–89 and then
turned against each other in a bloody civil war
that resulted in the creation of the taliban regime
in 1996. Informal Islamist parties began appearing
in Afghanistan in the mid-1960s, at a time when
the radical ideologies of sayyid qUtb (d. 1966)
and abU al-ala maWdUdi (d. 1979) were becom-
ing a strong presence in neighboring Pakistan.
Afghan Islamist parties at the time began adopting
the call for Jihad, which was central to Qutb’s and
Maududi’s programs. It was only with the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, however, that
these calls were seriously heeded.
Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation com-
prised many different elements, including national-
ist parties, pro-China communists, and Islamists. It
was the latter group, however, that dominated the
fight to expel the Soviets. Based in Afghan refugee
camps in Peshewar, Pakistan, Islamist resistance
groups, called the mujahidin, quickly began receiv-
ing money and arms from saUdi arabia and the
United states. The dominant force among the
Afghan resistance was the Hezb-e-Islami (Islamic
Party), led by gUlbUddin hekmatyar (b. 1947?),
one of the earliest and most conservative Afghani
Islamist activists. Early disunity among as many as
seven different Afghan mujahidin groups slowed
the progress of the fight against the Soviets, but
with foreign assistance, they were able to operate
effectively on the battlefield. During this time, the
Afghan mujahidin were treated favorably in the
Western media as “freedom fighters.”
The Afghan guerrillas were not alone in their
fight against the Soviet occupation. Islamists from
the entire Muslim world traveled to Afghanistan
under the banner of Islam and Jihad. Among these
Islamists were Usama bin ladin (Saudi Arabia),
Ayman Zawahiri (egypt), Umar abd al-rahman
(Egypt), Abdullah Azzam (Palestine), and legions
of young men from countries around the Mus-
lim world. The resulting hybrid, transnational
network of Islamists advocated an active jihad
against foreign powers and a reconstruction of
Afghanistan according to an extremely conserva-
tive interpretation of Islam. Together, the Afghan
and Arab mujahidin forced the Soviet withdrawal
in 1989. Hekmatiyar’s Hezb-e-Islami and Burhan-
uddin Rabbani’s Jamiat-i-Islami (Islamic Soci-
ety, based in northern Afghanistan) emerged as
the strongest mujahidin groups after the SovietK 16 Afghan mujahidin