Under the pretense of maintaining the 1978 Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty, the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. To combat the Soviets, how did the Afghan opposition get weaponry agreements with the CIA? Continue reading to learn more about the history of the Soviet intervention and American involvement for the Mujahideen.
The Soviets ultimately lost the operation, despite winning the engagements. The Mujahideen armed by the CIA and other minor Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organizations engaged in a nine-year insurgency war against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Army during the 1980s.
This struggle is referred to as the Soviet-Afghan War. The majority of this fight was fought in Afghanistan’s heartland.
So, why did the Soviet assault Afghanistan? Afghanistan, after all, has historically been a geopolitical dilemma. Let’s go through time to the genesis of this dispute. Afghanistan was used as a strategic piece in what popularly known as “The Great Game” between the powers of Tsarist Russia and Great Britain starting in the early 19th century. Britain fought three wars in Afghanistan to provide a bulwark against Russian invasion because they were concerned that Tsarist Russia’s progress into Central Asia would bring it dangerously near to the boundary of India, their colonial treasure. The Soviet Union was the first nation to establish diplomatic ties with Afghanistan after British colonial control ended in 1919, the year Afghans gained the right to determine their own foreign policy. Afghanistan was one of the first countries to publicly recognize the Bolshevik government (aka Marxist) following it’s independence.
As a result of Moscow’s subsequent struggles to secure Afghan loyalties, their government faced cultural opposition. The Soviet Union sought to support the 1978 communist revolution in Afghanistan and the ensuing one-party state it established under the leadership of the communist party’s leader, Nur Mohammed Taraki, despite the fact that he was very disliked with the Afghan population. However, in September 1979, Taraki was ousted and murdered by Afghan Communist Party members who disapproved of him. In order to reinstate a government more in line with its preferences, Russia intervened Afghanistan in December of 1979.
Because of the elevated likelihood that Afghan figureheads would turn to the United States for assistance, the turmoil in Afghanistan dismayed Soviet governance. Little did they know, however, that the Mujahideen were supported in various ways, largely by the United States, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, the United Kingdom, and other countries.
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the CIA operation run by the United States between 1979 and 1992 to arm and support the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan. This made it possible to provide the Afghan resistance with thousands of tons of weapons valued at several billion US dollars. One of the longest and most costly clandestine CIA programs ever was Operation Cyclone. Midway through 1979, funding was formally started with $695,000, drastically grew to $20–$30 million per year in 1980, and escalated to $630 million per year in 1987. For the majority of these operations, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was utilized as a middleman to conceal the sources of assistance for the Afghan opposition.
Despite failing to establish a supportive administration, Afghanistan eventually forced the Soviets to withdraw, leaving the Afghan government in shambles. The 1988 Geneva Accords, which finally resulted in the Soviet military pulling out in early 1989. According to estimates, between 6.5 and 11.5 percent of Afghanistan’s population died during the fighting. Afghanistan was devastated by the conflict in a significant way. Over one-third of Afghanistan’s pre-war population was fleeing to Pakistan or Iran, creating 5.5 to 6.2 million refugees as a result of the conflict.
The CIA calculated in 1987 that the expenditures of the Soviet military operation of Afghanistan equated to around 2.5% of their annual military budget. Many have claimed throughout the years that this was one of the factors that contributed to the Soviet Union’s disintegration in 1991.
Thanks For Reading
Politics, economics, and religion are frequently the main reasons of war. Any government that employs military force to intervene in other nations in order to expand its resources, scope and visibility is just a reflection of its own ideals and a complete lack of empathy and comprehension for people and cultures whom do not share its orientation. The United States’ involvement in the ongoing conflict in Yemen serves as a good illustration. The fundamental causes of Yemen’s humanitarian disaster are the blockades that the US and Saudi Arabia are maintaining.
Works Cited:
World Info History 