re: Watched Rambo III - why was Russia interested in Afghanistan?

The uprising in Herat occurred in March 1979, and this was a clear reaction of the population to the Communist policies of agrarian reform, an education campaign that included communist propaganda and gender mixing in the schools.

Jamiat-el Islami was the main organizer of the rebels, "Society of Islam" was clearly religious and the rebels chanted Allah Ahkbar as they slaughtered those Afghans wearing western clothes and the Soviet military advisors.

The Soviet Politburo knew what they were up against. Most were old enough to remember what it took for the Soviets to crush the Islamic uprisings in Central Asia in the 1920s.

Certainly communist factions fighting each other did not help, but the war from the start was a battle between Communism and Islam.

I can tell you the Afghans want a home field advantage…. AND IF there was any kind of world conflict they would be ok… the USA would win of course by a landslide, but Afghan would wait for the bombs and adjust accordingly.

How did this thread get moved to the Movie/TV Board?

We are not discussing the acting abilities of Sylvester Stallone, the plausibility of the movie, or what people think of the movie.

The sad thing was, before all this started, Afghanistan enjoyed a higher standard of living than most of the world did. No. Seriously. They were doing pretty darn good there. Maybe not US level, but compared to most they were doing really well.

A growing radical Islamic presence in the sticks (something that was happening across the Muslim world)lead to a Communist take over. That led to a radical Islamic rebellion which led to a Soviet intervention. Which, in turn, led to US support of the radical Islamic factions.

Yeah. We backed the wrong horse.

To make matters worse once the Soviets scooted out we stopped supporting the moderate elements we had been backing. With Pakistan cheerfully exporting their radicals into Afghanistan something like the Taliban was bound to happen.

I suspect we will see what we saw with the end of the Soviet intervention. The Kabul government actually holds on for a bit before falling to crazed Jihadists. 20 years from now someone new, maybe the Chinese this time, will try to go in and sort things out.

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The uprising in Herat occurred in March 1979, and this was a clear reaction of the population to the Communist policies of agrarian reform, an education campaign that included communist propaganda and gender mixing in the schools.

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But the crisis and the beginnings of Soviet intervention began much earlier, and there is no particular justification to rate the uprising in Herat any higher than the kidnapping and murder of Adolph Dubs, done by leftists who wanted the country to be part of the non-aligned movement. The origins of the treaty which allowed the PDPA to request Soviet intervention were finalized in December 1978, and were done in the shadow of the geopolitical situation at the time, as India, Pakistan, and Iran were all competing in Afghanistan for influence since the government under Khan was relatively weak.

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Jamiat-el Islami was the main organizer of the rebels, "Society of Islam" was clearly religious and the rebels chanted Allah Ahkbar as they slaughtered those Afghans wearing western clothes and the Soviet military advisors.

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Again, the origins of relationships points to a far earlier origin, with Pakistan leveraging support from various Pashtun leaders, both secular and non-secular, since 1961 in earnest. But the Islamist origins in Afghanistan present a far more complicated scenario in terms of parsing out the degree to which they compelled a Soviet response, because the initial response, as Olivier Roy argues, was a nationalistic one, with the Babrak government seen as a puppet. The February 1980 demonstrations in Kabul were secular, and the mutiny of the Ghazni garrison can be characterized as nationalistic as well. Resistance began being organized in Peshawar after a mid-March announcement that Hebz-e Islami and other parties would form an alliance, with Abdul Rasul Sayyaf chosen as the vice-president of this alliance. With Sayyaf as the go-between for the Arabs, and with his theological background did a particularly Islamist resistance in the form of something similar to what we see today formed.

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The Soviet Politburo knew what they were up against. Most were old enough to remember what it took for the Soviets to crush the Islamic uprisings in Central Asia in the 1920s.

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But the minutes of the Politburo don't mention anything with regard to jihadism in particular, at least from keyword searches of a few databases. The March 21st, 1979 meeting of the Politburo does mention Islamic fundamentalists in Herat, but in the context of the failure of the Saur Revolution, and the need for direct Soviet intervention. What guided that intervention was the Brezhnev doctrine, not a notion that fundamentalism could spread into Soviet Central Asia. Under that doctrine, it didn't matter whether it was capitalism or fundamentalism, just that securing victory for Afghan socialists was important for socialism everywhere.

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the war from the start was a battle between Communism and Islam.

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I'm finding scant evidence for this, and there is very little source documentation which supports that point. I'm not denying that it eventually could be characterized like this, with a nebulous mid-80's date far more believable, but characterizing the situation in 1978 as primarily a battle between communism and Islam is anachronistic, from my point of view. Firstly, no one in the world predicted that the particular brand of political Islam could organize resistance so effectively, in multiple theaters with only cursory regard for national origin. If the Politburo spoke of that ability in the context that we know understand it, which they don't seem to, then there would have been some evidence of further suppression of Soviet Muslims through the use of the Spiritual Directorates, which they didn't do, as during this time period, there was even a new edition of the Qu'ran that was allowed to be published and disseminated.

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But the crisis and the beginnings of Soviet intervention began much earlier, and there is no particular justification to rate the uprising in Herat any higher than the kidnapping and murder of Adolph Dubs, done by leftists who wanted the country to be part of the non-aligned movement.

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I don't know why you consider this opinion anachronistic, and citing Oliver Roy, a Maoist who has some agenda to downplay the role of Jihadists is sort of suspicious.

But the recorded conversation between Kosygin and Taraki makes it clear to both the Afghan Communists and Moscow who the enemy is.

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Kosygin
And what about the officers of the division? Have they become traitors or [are] some of them…together with [the] division commander on the airfield[?]

Taraki
A small part of the officers have remained faithful, the rest of them are with the enemy.

Kosygin
Are some of the workers, citizens and office workers in Herat on your side? Or anyone else?

Taraki
We do not have active support of the population. Almost all of the population is under the Shi’ite slogans.“Do not believe the atheists, follow us”—their propaganda is based on this slogan.

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Kosygin
As I understand you have no well-trained military personnel at all or very few of them.
Hundreds of Afghan officers have been trained in the Soviet Union. Where are they?

Taraki
Most of them are Muslim reactionaries or they are also called Muslim Brothers. We can’t rely on them, we are not sure of them.

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Also it is just as likely Dubbs was killed by jihadists as well, not non-alligned leftists.

LINK

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I don't know why you consider this opinion anachronistic, and citing Oliver Roy, a Maoist who has some agenda to downplay the role of Jihadists is sort of suspicious.

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I cited Roy because his book on Afghanistan was one of the first that compiled all the material, as it was published in 1990, and the book dealt with specifically Islamic resistance. His political affiliation is not relevant to the arguments and evidence presented in the book, and doesn’t discount the arguments at all. I can go to a whole host of other source material too, if you would prefer, and it would say the same thing. You would be one of the first people to make a connection to that resistance to the Soviets was specifically Islamic in 1978 or 1979. By 1983 you could certainly characterize the resistance that way, but the evidence that the Soviet invasion was predicated on a notion of Islamic resistance that was in its infant stages is spurious. And it makes little sense given what we know, as the Soviets were the first country to recognize the new Iranian government, and did so despite the revolution being the most successful example of political Islam, and did so despite the fact that Iran has a much stronger connection to the regions of the Caucuses that were Muslim, in a very literal sense. Azerbaijan, among other parts of the Caucasus were under Persian rule for a long time, a province of Iran also has the name Azerbaijan which signifies its closeness, the ancient Persian homeland is in Central Asia split among Soviet satellites though Turkey has far more influence in those states than Afghanistan or Iran, and the Iranians were interested, even from the very beginning, of exporting their revolution elsewhere. It would beggar belief that the Soviets would be wary of political Islam in Afghanistan, which had disparate connections to Central Asia and very little with the Caucasus, while embracing Iran, if they were fearful of Islamic fundamentalism spreading to regions under their control.

The other thing is that even after political Islam developed into a more cogent philosophy, it didn’t influence Soviet Muslims, because those Muslims were tightly controlled by the Spiritual Directorates. It wasn’t until well after the collapse of the USSR that political Islam spread, through the very specific and directed efforts of Saudi Arabia, which invested money in the region, and Pakistan, which sought to build land connections through Afghanistan to Karachi, only to be foiled when those governments learned they were spreading Wahhabi teachings very deliberately all through Western Asia.

I don’t think that conversation supports you as much as you think it seems to, as again, Taraki mentions the Iranians and Pakistanis far more than he does the Islamists, which again was the reason the PDAP sought out the possibility of Soviet aid in the first place.

Characterizing the Soviets as fearful of the spread of political Islam and specifically Islamic resistance is so poorly supported in the source literature that it would require far more evidence than you’ve offered. The sheer size of the claim makes it very difficult to support.

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It would beggar belief that the Soviets would be wary of political Islam in Afghanistan, which had disparate connections to Central Asia and very little with the Caucasus, while embracing Iran, if they were fearful of Islamic fundamentalism spreading to regions under their control.

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The Russians and the Soviets have been fighting Islam since before Kazan in 1552. They understood clearly that the best method was to kill as many Muslims as possible, whether it was in the Caucuses in the 19th Century, or in Central Asia in the 1920s, or Afghanistan from the outset.

That obviously didn't stop them from allowing pacified groups to continue to exist to balance other groups. Infiltrating religious organizations with the security service (something the Communists did to Christians as well), or sicking and supporting Muslims against other Western Powers like the British in the 19th Century or the US with Iran.

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The Russians and the Soviets have been fighting Islam since before Kazan in 1552. They understood clearly that the best method was to kill as many Muslims as possible, whether it was in the Caucuses in the 19th Century, or in Central Asia in the 1920s, or Afghanistan from the outset.

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But little reference to that was made in the source literature. They could have referenced the Basmachi movement, which was Muslims who were directly opposed to Soviet rule, or any of the other direct incursions into Afghanistan, as this wasn’t the Soviets first foray into the country. In contrast, the USSR was eager to extend relations with Muslim countries at their periphery, and still, there is no mention in the source literature that they recognized what Islamism represented. And I don’t see how this addresses my point. Put yourself in their shoes for a second. If your worry is about political Islam in Afghanistan, and worry it could spread to regions under your control, then why would you embrace political Islam in Iran, which had more robust access to those same regions? In other words, if the threat they saw in Afghanistan was specifically Islamist, would the Soviets have invaded if instead the threat was liberal capitalism? Given that they were far more explicit about Amin turning to the US as a reason for entering the war, their entrance would make no sense.

I think you are elevating the religious aspect of the initial decision to invade that isn’t warranted, as why would they kill Amin, who was an atheist, if their explicit interest was to prevent political Islam from spreading?

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Emily Blunt’s arse

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You sir...should post more.