developed such criteria. But given the patent anti-Americanism of
figures such as Hekmatyar, it boggles the mind that key American
policy makers were prepared to go along with them.
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT FOR THE AFGHAN
RESISTANCE
Beyond Pakistan’s involvement, the Afghan resistance also
received support through a range of international channels. The
forms which this assistance took varied from the strictly moral to
humanitarian and material, but each was important in its own way,
and served to keep the Afghanistan issue alive.
The UN response to the Soviet invasion
The United Nations (UN) was the first international organisation in
which opposition to the Soviet invasion was articulated, and also
the most important, although its scope for concrete action was
limited. Under Article 24 of the 1945 Charter of the United
Nations, the Security Council is given ‘primary responsibility for
the maintenance of international peace and security’. In 1980, its
15 members included the USA, USSR, Britain, France, and China
as ‘permanent’ members, which under Article 27.3 enjoyed a right
of ‘veto’ of all non-procedural matters. For this reason, there was
no prospect that the Security Council would adopt any resolution
condemning the Soviet invasion, and it did not: the USSR on 7
January 1980 vetoed a draft resolution on the situation in
Afghanistan put forward by a group of non-aligned members led
by Bangladesh. However, this was not the end of the matter. In
1950, the UN General Assembly had adopted Resolution 377 (v),
known at the time as the ‘Acheson Resolution’ but subsequently
better known as the ‘Uniting for Peace Resolution’, which provi-
ded for the convoking of an Emergency Special Session of the
General Assembly in the event that the Security Council was
unable to act in response to a threat to, or breach of, the peace. On
76 The Afghanistan Wars