He is much more interested in a sort of egalitarian vision of an Islamic republic, one with representative rather than this kind of autocratic rule. And yet despite these ideological differences, these two people ally themselves or at least align in opposition to communist government.
Then the fourth and final group are just ordinary people — people that just pick up arms and fight and resist. This movement is a little slower. Once the Soviets invade, this group of ordinary people will grow dramatically, and this is the bulk of the mujahedeen. The US involvement is uneven. They definitely use the mujahedeen to their advantage.
But that money is mostly going into the hands of the more organized groups of the mujahedeen. But unfortunately, the more organized groups are those reactionary elements. But it is to these more reactionary elements that the US allies itself.
And, in fact, it makes some really horrific blunders. One of the things that the US ends up doing is that it pressures Egypt to release a group of Islamists that it had arrested.
And one of the Islamists that was arrested in Egypt and then is released is Ayman al-Zawahiri, who happens to be the second-in-command of al-Qaeda. The consequence of that will be that once the US and the Soviet Union withdraw their influence, Afghanistan falls into a civil war. And in that civil war, both al-Qaeda will be born and the Taliban. The unintended consequence of that meddling is chaos.
The Soviet Union and the United States both sign an agreement, or at least, they are the guarantors of this agreement known as the Geneva Accords. But the United States agrees that we will no longer fund the mujahedeen, or at least that one group of the mujahedeen, and the Soviet Union agrees that they will withdraw.
The Soviet Union does formally withdraw. It leaves no real support for its former allies, the government. And the United States continues to funnel some money, but it mostly turns away. The result is that within three years, the government collapses and the civil war emerges between these old and mujahedeen factions, who, again, like I mentioned, are completely different with very different visions. A power vacuum is created, and into that vacuum will step the civil war. From that civil war will be born the Taliban who emerged as a completely new actor.
They arrived fresh onto the scene. The Taliban exerts its authority through most of Afghanistan, not all of it. Unlike now, where they seem to have extended their control to everywhere other than the Panjshir Valley. Herat will eventually fall, but the North — led again by the Panjshir Valley, and Ahmad Shah Massoud and what would eventually become known as the United Front or the Northern Alliance — they will have their own autonomous territory that the Taliban will never conquer.
And only a few countries will recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
But they fall in , relatively quickly. The US starts, actually, through a bombing campaign, and the Taliban really collapses there.
And so they actually pursued peace quite early on. In October , they offer to hand over Osama bin Laden in return for an end to the bombing campaign. The offer was rejected because the Taliban wanted to hand him over to a third party and for a trial.
The Taliban just completely vanish and become a small insurgency group that lives mostly in mountains. Some of them try to escape into hiding in Pakistan, some of them end up in pockets in Kandahar, some of them are in safe houses. Somehow, in the process, they were defeated, they went away and hid and kind of built a spate of an economic base through extortion and drug trafficking.
They were reorganized in the s and emerged as once more a sort of unified political movement. To back up a bit, and I feel odd asking this, but why did the US even go to Afghanistan in ?
Because of al-Qaeda? Because of bin Laden? But there was also a language of liberation that was woven into it. And that was more of an addition, a post-hoc, after-the-fact justification.
The main justification was to go after Osama bin Laden. And that was, we need to nation-build, we need to build Afghanistan up. Bush, the argument or justification for why they want to nation-build is, one, so that they can create a pro-American government, a foothold in the region, and therefore are able to extend American bases.
The justification was that it was to prevent future attacks, but it was also about extending American military bases and allowing more bases to be built there and therefore extending American military might.
Part of the strength of the American military has always been the ability to deploy quickly. Skip to main content. Search for:. The United States and the Mujahideen Learning Objective Discuss the ties between the United States and the mujahideen. Key Points Although U.
After the Soviet invasion in December , which was a surprise to Carter, the CIA expanded the program, code-named Operation Cyclone, and began providing weapons along with money to the mujahideen through the Pakistani intelligence services.
Conspiracy theorists have alleged that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were beneficiaries of CIA assistance, a claim which is refuted by many experts. But making good on his promise proved difficult as the Taliban continued to surge, and an Islamic State affiliate emerged. In his first major Afghanistan decision , Trump outsourced troop level authority to the Pentagon. His team was divided along ideological lines, between his military advisers who advocated a continued presence and more staunch nationalists who opposed foreign interventions.
Eventually, Trump admitted in an August speech that though his instinct had been to withdraw all US troops, conditions made it impossible. He left the future of the American presence there open-ended, rejecting a timeline for withdrawal and instead insisting "conditions on the ground" would dictate any decision-making.
A year later, Trump tasked Zalmay Khalilzad, a seasoned Afghan American diplomat, with leading negotiations with the Taliban meant to bring the war to an end. Meanwhile, the Taliban continued carrying out a series of terror attacks, including in Kabul, which killed scores of civilians.
Even after Trump invited and then canceled peace talks with the group to be held at Camp David in , the discussions continued with Khalilzad. A deal was struck in February that set the course for a full American withdrawal in exchange for guarantees from the Taliban it would reduce violence and cut ties to terror groups.
But there weren't any measures to enforce those promises, which the Pentagon said went unfulfilled. Even as US troops began leaving, the Taliban gained strength. And the May deadline for pulling out all US troops ultimately was passed onto Trump's successor. Joe Biden. Even before entering office in January, Biden had begun weighing what to do in Afghanistan, where he'd long become disillusioned about the war efforts.
After having his advice to remove US troops rejected by Obama, Biden was finally in a position to end what he'd come to view as a war without purpose.
Over the course of the early months of his presidency, Biden received advice from his national security team, including "clear-eyed" warnings that withdrawing all US troops could lead to the eventual collapse of Afghanistan's government and a takeover by the Taliban.
Conversely, remaining in the country past the May deadline set in Trump's deal with the Taliban would expose US troops to attacks. Ultimately, Biden announced that the remaining 2, US troops in Afghanistan would come home by September 11, -- 20 years after the terror attacks that prompted the war in the first place.
It was clear, Biden said, that the United States' objectives had been fulfilled -- and that there wasn't anything more his country could do to build Afghanistan into a stable democracy. The timeline eventually accelerated as the Pentagon worked to pull forces out faster. The Taliban, meanwhile, were taking over provincial capitals, often without any resistance from the Afghan military. On August 15, the Taliban returned to power in Kabul after Ghani fled the country -- a collapse that American officials frankly said happened far more quickly than they anticipated.
The US and its allies began a hurried mission to evacuate citizens and Afghan allies who had assisted during the war effort and feared reprisals by the militants. Biden sent 6, US troops back into the country to secure the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, and facilitate the airlift. But a new deadline -- August 31 -- still stands for those troops to leave.
The Taliban has called it a red line.
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