# data[].attributes.body
This source gives a good summary of the causes of the Soviet-Afghan War by using timelines and maps to help deepen understanding.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Afghanistan bordered some of the southern Soviet republics of the USSR, making it easy for Moscow to support a communist-led government when it seized power in the country's capital, Kabul, in April 1978.

The new government was led by Nur Muhammad Taraki.

Many ordinary Afghans rejected it because its atheism was at odds with their Muslim faith.

The communists imprisoned, tortured and murdered many Muslim religious leaders.

This outraged the majority of those in Afghanistan and led to the formation of an anti-communist resistance movement known as the .

In a difficult and confusing struggle for control in Afghan politics, Hafizullah Amin came to power and ordered the death of his predecessor .

The revolt against communist rule which had begun under Taraki worsened under Amin.

The situation became increasingly unstable as:

The Mujahideen wanted the overthrow of the Amin government; they declared a - a holy war - on the supporters of Amin.

The USSR alleged that Amin was an agent of the ; they did not want American influence on their Southern border.

This all came to a head on the 24 December 1979 when Soviet troops invaded Afghanisation.

Amin was assassinated and a pro-Moscow leader, Babrak Karmal , was installed in his place.

Many Afghan soldiers had deserted to the Mujahideen and the Karmal government needed 85,000 Soviet soldiers to keep him in power.

It was clear that his position as head of the Afghan government depended entirely on Soviet military support.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - CCEA - GCSE History Revision - CCEA - BBC Bitesize

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Afghanistan bordered some of the southern Soviet republics of the USSR, making it easy for Moscow to support a communist-led government when it seized power in the country's capital, Kabul, in April 1978. The new government was led by Nur Muhammad Taraki. Many ordinary Afghans rejected it because its atheism was at odds with their Muslim faith.

# data[].attributes.body
This video provides more information about the Soviet-Afghan War, including causes and effects.

# data[].attributes.body
This sources gives good backround information about Afghan war and shows the influence of race.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article was most recently revised and updated by

Afghan War, in the history of Afghanistan, the internal conflict that began in 1978 between anticommunist Islamic guerrillas and the Afghan communist government (aided in 1979-89 by Soviet troops), leading to the overthrow of the government in 1992. More broadly, the term also encompasses military activity within Afghanistan after 1992-but apart from the Afghanistan War (2001-14), a U.S.-led invasion launched in response to the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. By this broader definition, many analysts consider the internal Afghan War as lasting well into the 21st century and overlapping with the U.S.-led Afghanistan War.

Insurgency against communist rule (1978-92)

The roots of the war lay in the overthrow of the centrist government of President Mohammad Daud Khan in April 1978 by left-wing military officers led by Nur Mohammad Taraki. Power was thereafter shared by two Marxist-Leninist political groups, the People's (Khalq) Party and the Banner (Parcham) Party, which had earlier emerged from a single organization, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and had reunited in an uneasy coalition shortly before the coup. The new government, which had little popular support, forged close ties with the Soviet Union, launched ruthless purges of all domestic opposition, and began extensive land and social reforms that were bitterly resented by the devoutly Muslim and largely anticommunist population. Insurgencies arose against the government among both tribal and urban groups, and all of these-known collectively as the mujahideen (Arabic: mujāhidūn, "those who engage in jihad")-were Islamic in orientation. These uprisings, along with internal fighting and coups within the government between the People's and Banner factions, prompted the Soviets to invade the country in December 1979, sending in some 30,000 troops and toppling the short-lived presidency of People's leader Hafizullah Amin. The aim of the Soviet operation was to prop up their new but faltering client state, now headed by Banner leader Babrak Karmal, but the mujahideen rebellion grew in response, spreading to all parts of the country. The Soviets initially left the suppression of the rebellion to the Afghan army, but the latter was beset by mass desertions and remained largely ineffective throughout the war.

The Afghan War quickly settled down into a stalemate, with about 100,000 Soviet troops controlling the cities, larger towns, and major garrisons and the mujahideen moving with relative freedom throughout the countryside. Soviet troops tried to crush the insurgency by various tactics, but the guerrillas generally eluded their attacks. The Soviets then attempted to eliminate the mujahideen's civilian support by bombing and depopulating the rural areas. These tactics sparked a massive flight from the countryside; by 1982 some 2.8 million Afghans had sought asylum in Pakistan, and another 1.5 million had fled to Iran. The mujahideen were eventually able to neutralize Soviet air power through the use of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles supplied by the Soviet Union's Cold War adversary, the United States.

The mujahideen were fragmented politically into a handful of independent groups, and their military efforts remained uncoordinated throughout the war. The quality of their arms and combat organization gradually improved, however, owing to experience and to the large quantity of arms and other war matériel shipped to the rebels, via Pakistan, by the United States and other countries and by sympathetic Muslims from throughout the world. In addition, an indeterminate number of Muslim volunteers-popularly termed "Afghan-Arabs," regardless of their ethnicity-traveled from all parts of the world to join the opposition.

The war in Afghanistan became a quagmire for what by the late 1980s was a disintegrating Soviet Union. (The Soviets suffered some 15,000 dead and many more injured.) In 1988 the United States, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union signed an agreement by which the latter would withdraw its troops (completed in 1989), and Afghanistan returned to nonaligned status. In April 1992 various rebel groups, together with newly rebellious government troops, stormed the besieged capital of Kabul and overthrew the communist president, Najibullah, who had succeeded Karmal in 1986.

Conflict after 1992

A transitional government, sponsored by various rebel factions, proclaimed an Islamic republic, but jubilation was short-lived. President Burhanuddin Rabbani, leader of the Islamic Society (Jamʿiyyat-e Eslāmī), a major mujahideen group, refused to leave office in accordance with the power-sharing arrangement reached by the new government. Other mujahideen groups, particularly the Islamic Party (Ḥezb-e Eslāmī), led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, surrounded Kabul and began to barrage the city with artillery and rockets. These attacks continued intermittently over the next several years as the countryside outside Kabul slipped into chaos.

Partly as a response, the Taliban (Pashto: "Students"), a puritanical Islamic group led by a former mujahideen commander, Mohammad Omar, emerged in the fall of 1994 and systematically seized control of the country, occupying Kabul in 1996. The Taliban-augmented by volunteers from various Islamic extremist groups sheltering in Afghanistan, many of whom were Afghan-Arab holdovers from the earlier conflict-soon controlled all but a small portion of northern Afghanistan, which was held by a loose coalition of mujahideen forces known as the Northern Alliance. Fighting continued at a stalemate until 2001, when the Taliban refused demands by the U.S. government to extradite Saudi Arabian exile Osama bin Laden, the leader of an Islamic extremist group, al-Qaeda, which had close ties with the Taliban and was accused of having launched terrorist attacks against the United States, including the group of devastating strikes on September 11. Subsequently, U.S. special operations forces, allied with Northern Alliance fighters, launched a series of military operations in Afghanistan that drove the Taliban from power by early December. ( See Afghanistan War.) After a period of transitional interim government, a republic was established in 2004, but the new government struggled well into the 21st century to secure centralized authority over the country against a powerful Taliban insurgency.

Casualties and repercussions

Afghanistan has never conducted a full census, and it is thus difficult to gauge the number of casualties suffered in the country since the outbreak of fighting. The best estimates available indicate that some 1.5 million Afghanis were killed before 1992-although the number killed during combat and the number killed as an indirect result of the conflict remain unclear. The casualty rate after 1992 is even less precise. Many thousands were killed as a direct result of factional fighting; hundreds or thousands of prisoners and civilians were executed by tribal, ethnic, or religious rivals; and a large number of combatants-and some noncombatants-were killed during the U.S. offensive. Moreover, tens of thousands died of starvation or of a variety of diseases, many of which in less-troubled times could have been easily treated, and hundreds of thousands were killed or injured by the numerous land mines in the country. (Afghanistan was, by the end of the 20th century, one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, and vast quantities of unexploded ordnance littered the countryside.) The number of Afghan refugees living abroad fluctuated over the years with the fighting and reached a peak of some six million people in the late 1980s.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Adam Augustyn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Afghan War | History, Casualties, Dates, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Afghan War, in the history of Afghanistan, the internal conflict that began in 1978 between anticommunist Islamic guerrillas and the Afghan communist government (aided in 1979-89 by Soviet troops), leading to the overthrow of the government in 1992.

# data[].attributes.body
Another video explaining more about the Soviet-Afghan War.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Cold War: The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan - Episode 45

# data[].attributes.body
This source gives a good amount of information on the Afghan coup. And I thought it would be helpfull start learning about the topic. From someone that lived in Afghanistan.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On July 17, 1973, Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan returned to power after leading a bloodless military coup against his cousin King Zahir Shah, who was traveling in Europe. This ended the monarchy and founded the Republic of Afghanistan under President Daud. The leftists gained an upper hand when a faction of the PDPA known as Parcham (banner) led by Babrak Karmal collaborated with Daud in staging the coup. The coup came ten years after Daud was forced to resign as prime minister by Zahir Shah - or as he later claimed volunteered to step down in the interest of democratization of the government. In August 1973 the king abdicated rather than risking an all-out civil war. The forces that helped Daud overthrow the monarchy consisted of three categories of people: the young leftist officers, disillusioned former government officials, and Daud's personal supporters inside and outside the government.

Among the above categories, the Parchami Communists, due to their close ties with the Soviet Union and influence within the armed forces, wielded significant power in the new regime and exerted influence over Daud's policy decisions. They made every effort to facilitate the expansion of the relationship with the Soviet Union at the expense of the West. They also spared no efforts to target their arch-rivals, the Islamists. The government jailed many of their leaders and forced others to flee to Pakistan where they laid the foundation of the resistance against the secular republican regime in Kabul. Gulboddin Hekmatyar, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Mawlawi Yunus Khales, and Ahmad Shah Massoud were among the leading figures of Islamists in exile. Just two months after the coup, former Prime Minister of Afghanistan, Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal was accused of plotting a coup and he was arrested with a number of other nationalists. Following a staged investigation, the regime announced that Maiwandwal had committed suicide in jail before his trial, but it was widely believed and supported by a great deal of evidence that he was tortured to death. Certain observers believe that the plot was engineered more by the leftist intelligence and police officers than Daud himself. Several independence investigative studies have been done inside and out ide the country which points to fallacy of the accusations that led to brutal punishment of the suspects.

With the return of Sardar Daud Kahn to power, the issue of Pashtunistan again found its place on the front burner of the Afghan foreign policy. Daud had tacitly blamed the monarchy for not seizing the opportunity to exploit Pakistan's political and military weakness after its loss of East Pakistan in 1971 to get a favorable deal with Islamabad on the frontier. The leftist elements in the new regime, with the implicit approval of Moscow (to increase Kabul's dependence on USSR) pushed the Pashtunistan issue even further at a time Pakistan was facing insurgency in Baluchistan and having been practically dismembered by the independence of Bangladesh. Afghanistan's irredentist claims were revived causing increased wariness in Pakistan. In order to preempt Afghanistan's efforts to support the anti-Pakistani insurgency in Baluchistan, Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto decided to arm the exiled anti-Daud Islamists in Pakistan to cause troubles for Daud and create spheres of influence inside Afghanistan. The Pakistani-trained and armed insurgents including the late Ahmad Shah Massoud and fighters affiliated with former Mujahedin leaders Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulboddin Hekmatyar staged uprisings in July 1975 in the Panjsher Valley and eastern provinces which were rapidly crushed by the Afghan security forces.

This strengthened the Soviets' hand in their effort to keep Afghanistan dependent on the Soviet Union. Their agents continuously whispered in the ears of Afghan leaders that "you have a potential enemy." The leftists did not have to work hard since Daud himself was known to be an avid supporter of Pashtunistan. In my hour-long one-on-one meeting with President Daud in the spring of 1974, he spoke with a lot of passion about the Pashtun tribes being "under the yoke" of the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani government through "sheer use of force." The meeting was not about the future of Pashtunistan, I was called by the Rahbar (the Leader) as he was commonly referred to, to discuss the creation of an institute, equivalent of a Defense College, to train and educate senior officials of different government departments on fundamentals of security and defense strategy in Afghanistan in order to facilitate a whole of government approach to national issues and the development of a national security culture, which the President rightfully saw missing. I was one of a number of professionals that the President had hand- picked to teach at the institute officially named the "Institute of diplomacy." More than three years later, when I met the President in December 1977, for the last time, I found him very sober and willing to diversify the military establishment of Afghanistan through adopting suitable features and best practices of different nations. He also spoke of the wisdom of working closer with the neighbors and resolving the dispute with Pakistan.

The shifts in Daud's vision and his policies over some five years of his rule marked a major milestone in the recent military history of Afghanistan. They include purging the resolute leftists from the government, asserting his absolute power as legitimate President, and freeing the country from sole dependency on the Soviet Union at the expense of missing other opportunities in its international relations. The purge of selected Parchami Communists from the cabinet and other senior positions in the government began in 1975 right after the failed Pakistan-backed Islamists' rebellion of July 22, 1975. Although the revolt was easily crushed, the leadership of the Islamist movement continued to maintain and operate bases in Pakistan and receive training at Pakistan's special military training center in Chirat. Meanwhile, defeat of the rebellion resulted in fractures among the Pakistan-based Islamist leaders splitting the movement into a Hezb-i-Islami party under Gulboddin Hekmatyar, Mawlawi Yunus Khales and Qazi Amin Waqad; and a Jamiat-i-Islami under Burhanuddin Rabbani. The situation also led to a change in President Daud's thoughts on Pashtunistan in support of resolving the border dispute with Pakistan.

These changes were also supported by policy shifts both in Pakistan and Afghanistan in their relation with Great Powers. Failure of the U.S.-led SEATO and CENTO pacts to extend the desired assistance to Pakistan during the war of independence of Bangladesh in 1971 (which dismembered Pakistan) drove Prime Minister Bhutto to reconsider his political and military orientation in the 1970s and pursue a balanced foreign policy including expanding bi-lateral relations with the USSR. In Afghanistan, a similar reorientation of its foreign policy was initiated by President Daud in order to balance its close ties with the Soviet Union by expanding relations with the West and reaching out to Muslim nations in the Middle East including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Egypt and others for financial assistance. These events facilitated a rapprochement between Kabul and Islamabad, notably following the reciprocal visits of Bhutto and Daud to each other countries in 1976-77.

According Abdul Samad Ghaus who accompanied Daud, in his meeting in Kabul with visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Bhutto in June 1976, the Afghan leader indicated that there were countries, clearly referring to USSR, "that did not want to see the amelioration of Afghan-Pakistan relations. It was imperative that those quarters be denied the satisfaction of witnessing the worsening of relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan." After Daud's visit in August 1976, relations between the two countries significantly improved. Transit trade moved without any hurdles and even wheat from India's surplus crop was allowed to be transported overland from India to Afghanistan. Consequently the two leaders were about to reach an agreement on the recognition of the Durand Line in return for Pakistan granting autonomy to the North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan. The impending deal, however, was overtaken by events. In June 1977, a military coup in Pakistan led by General Zia-ul-Haq ended Bhutto's government and less than a year later President Daud was murdered in a bloody Communist coup.

Daud's weaning away from political and military dependence on the Soviet Union began in earnest in 1976. In the spring of that year, he appointed a commission of senior military professionals to review the Soviet military manuals used in the Afghan army and modify them in accordance with the operational environment and national military traditions of Afghanistan. I was appointed the head of the secretariat of the group which was presided over by General Nazir Kabir Seraj with several Afghan generals serving as members of the commission. The Commission brought together dozens of officers to work on military field manuals related to various arms and branches of service. Although the commission made no significant progress, the exercise alerted the Soviets to the possibility of Kabul parting ways with Moscow. This coincided with the Soviet mediation to reunify the two estranged factions ( Khalq and Parcham) of the PDPA Communist Party of Afghanistan in the summer of 1976. This Soviet action worried Daud who "viewed its purpose as hostile to the Afghan Republic." Meanwhile, many of the Afghan elite thought that when the Soviet Union intended to invade Afghanistan it would not be through overt military aggression, but rather take place through a military coup by the Communists which would pave the way for a Soviet incursion.

The Soviet fears of Kabul drifting away from Moscow's influence were confirmed following the stormy meeting between President Daud and General Secretary Brezhnev in Moscow in April, 1977 where Daud strongly objected to Brezhnev's complaint about the presence of experts from NATO countries stationed in the northern parts of Afghanistan. Daud bluntly challenged the remarks of his host and, in a decisive tone, reminded him that Afghanistan was a free country and would not allow any nation, including the Soviet Union, to dictate how the country should maintain relations with other states and their advisors. "We will never allow you," he remarked, "to dictate to us how to run our country and whom to employ in Afghanistan. How and where we employ the foreign experts will remain the exclusive prerogative of the Afghan state. Afghanistan shall remain poor, if necessary, but free in its acts and decisions." Another Afghan diplomat, Abdul Jalil Jamili, who was also present at that meeting, related the story to me in a toned-down version but essentially carrying the same message. The assertive position of President Daud was apparently "the last feather that broke the horse's back."

On his return to Afghanistan, President Daud took concrete steps to diversify his ties with the outside world. He publicly announced that "imported ideologies," a reference to Communism, were not what Afghanistan needed. The President signed a military cooperation treaty in Egypt and sent Afghan military and police officers for training there - a country that had adopted the same policy in 1974 to distance itself from the USSR. President Daud decided to build upon the increasing interest of the Shah of Iran in Afghanistan's affairs to seek Iranian assistance in funding Afghanistan's seven-year economic development plan. Signs of increased Iranian interest in Afghanistan were apparent following Mohammad Daud's 1973 coup d'état against King Mohammad Zahir Shah. The new Afghan regime, raised fears of Moscow's increased influence in Afghanistan at the expense of the country's traditional neutrality. Encouraged by the United States, the Shah's regime in Iran launched a systematic effort to offset Moscow's influence in Afghanistan by expanding economic and political ties with Kabul. Iran offered a two billion-dollar economic aid program over a ten-year period to Afghanistan. At the same time, Iran participated in channeling covert aid to underground anti-Daud Islamic groups who were fighting the Soviet influence in Afghanistan. Iran's dual track policy was aimed at blocking the expansion of the Soviet power in the region. During the next few years, the Afghan government clamped down on pro-Moscow leftist elements in the administration, took steps to resolve its long-standing political dispute with Pakistan and forged closer ties with Iran and some other Islamic countries in the region.

Domestically, Daud consolidated his power by adopting a new constitution that established a single party government system, the National Revolutionary Party, led by him. A Loya Jirga, whose delegates were hand-picked by the government, was convened in February 1977 and unanimously elected Daud as President for a seven-year term. Although President Daud excluded committed leftists from the new cabinet, he continued to depend on his close allies in key positions. His purge of Communists was partial, leaving many adherents of the Khalq (masses) and Parcham factions of PDPA in the armed forces. Meanwhile, disturbed by Daud's independent policies, Moscow stepped up its interaction with Afghan Communist factions mediating their merger in July 1977- less than a year before the bloody Communist coup against the Daud regime (April 27, 1978). Thus the Parcham and Khalq factions, who were previously locked in a power struggle, were reconciled into a unified party. Even before the unification, both factions were separately planning to overthrow the government in military uprisings for which they had recruited low and mid-level officers in the army and air force. The PDPA members, mainly the Khalq faction,increased their infiltration into the armed forces recruiting hundreds of Soviet-trained officers to their ranks. According to some of their leaders, the PDPA had started plotting the coup in 1976, two years before it actually took place.

In order to, distract the attention of the regime from their activities the leftists came up with a carefully-crafted deception plan. Their aim was to convince the regime that the real threat to the government was posed by the Islamist elements. The Communist operative inside the security forces even planted weapons and explosives in certain places and then tipped the government to their locations reporting that the arms belonged to the Islamist groups. This way, the leftists not only shifted the government attention from their conspiracies but also weakened their ideological enemies. Given the failed rebellion staged by Pakistan-backed Islamists in 1975, it did not take the Communist operatives a lot of effort to confuse the government and drive the security forces against the wrong targets.

( From Ali A. Jalali's "a Military History of Afghanistan from the Great Game to the Global War on Terror, University Press of Kansas, 2017

Daud supported the insurgency in Pakistani Baluchistan, sheltering rebels and establishing training camps on Afghan territory

Rubin, Fragmentation of Afghanistan, p. 100. Magnus and Naby, Afghanistan, p. 62

Author's conversation with Ambassador Jalil Jamili in Washington 2003

Abdul Samad Ghaus, pp. 174-7

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Today in History: the July 17, 1973 Coup and the end of Afghanistan Constitutional Monarchy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On July 17, 1973, Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan returned to power after leading a bloodless military coup against his cousin King Zahir Shah, who was traveling in Europe. This ended the monarchy and founded the Republic of Afghanistan under President Daud.

# data[].attributes.body
This source provides a solid summary of the historical background of Afghanistan and it's relationships with foreign countries (in specifc US) during the 20th century.

# data[].attributes.body
This source is from a present day perspective of native Afghans on the west culture and it's influence.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Some Afghan women live tradition-bound lives like this burqa-clad woman, left, in Herat, Afghanistan. Others appear to have more freedoms, like Aryana Sayeed, right, an Afghan singer and a judge on the international television show "The Voice," which launched in Kabul in May. Credit... Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

The United States and its allies have worked for a decade to instill democratic and legal reforms in Afghanistan, with a particular focus on women's rights. We asked Afghans through this Facebook note to share their views on the West's influence in their country. We received responses via e-mail and Facebook. Here is a selection of the responses, edited and condensed.
Nawa Arsala, 22, is an Afghan-American law student living in Washington.
The "Western" ways and laws in Afghanistan are not completely foreign to Afghans. Many forget that during the 1970s, Afghanistan was a flourishing and prosperous nation, with women who were teachers, nurses and entrepreneurs. The burqa was a rare sight, if seen at all. I believe that these laws are simply being reintroduced to a war-torn country that once had a taste of prosperity and democracy.
Curiouss Mindss, a teenage Afghan living in Kabul, wrote on Facebook:
Over 40 percent of Afghanistan's population consists of people who have lived their entire lives facing tragic events like war and illiteracy and have no familiarity with modern civilization. Adapting and accepting Western cultures and thoughts are absurd and against their views. I'm an 18-year-old Afghan living in Kabul and unless these war-stricken Afghans vanish I'm pessimistic about the future of this war-torn country.
Jawed Nader, 30, lives in London and leads the umbrella organization British and Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group.

It's a common misperception, reinforced by the international media, that democracy and human rights were imposed on Afghanistan after American forces ousted the Taliban in 2001. The 1964 Constitution included a bill of rights for Afghans, specifically including women. The 1977 Civil Code stipulated that girls under 16 should not be allowed to marry. The New York Times called this Afghanistan's " Golden Age," noting that "Afghan women not only attended Kabul University, they did so in miniskirts."

We Afghans have always been concerned with laws promising rights and democracy. It is just a coincidence that our fellow human beings in the West think the same way.

Image

Female students at the Polytechnical University in Kabul in the mid-1970s. Credit... Zh. Angelov/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images

Samira Hamidi is a human-rights activist who has been working on women's issues in Afghanistan for the past eight years. Formerly the country director for the civil society network Afghan Women's Network, she is studying for her master's at the University of York in Britain.
It is very important for the international community, international media and Afghan counterparts to understand that moving ahead with Westernized ideologies only cannot bring democracy, human rights and women's rights to Afghanistan.

While it is very important to look back at the past 12 years and measure the progress, one should always remember that there have been failures, too. While individuals and organizations kept pushing for women's rights, they also created a huge hatred toward them, causing the conservative but influential rural men to say that women's rights are against religion and Afghan values. The irony is that there has been a lot of publicity for women's rights and promoting a few elite women activists in these years, but there hasn't been any effort to build trust in communities, to encourage these conservative men to join the platform to support women's rights and to ensure that the approach is not only according to the religious and traditional values but actually follows it taking the diversity of Afghanistan into consideration.

In terms of current laws including the electoral law, elimination of violence against women law, etc., I disagree with using the Westernized word with it. These laws are purely the efforts of Afghans within the government and civil society who made it happen through lots of lobbying and advocacy.
Saad Mohseni is the owner of the MOBY Group, Afghanistan's largest media group. Shaharzad Akbar is from Afghanistan.
Don't judge Afghans by what they say but rather by what they do. It is an approach we apply to our television programming. Afghans are quick to criticize our various soap operas, reality TV shows, etc., but they fail to miss any of these shows. Today, millions of Afghan women are attending schools and universities, as well as the work force. The fact that they are allowed to "participate in life" is testament to the changing attitudes toward women. Bravado statements (from chauvinists) are expected from Afghan men. Again judge them by what they do (or allow), not what they say.

Women in skirts and heels walked down the street in Kabul in 1978. Credit... V. Seykov/Keystone, via Getty Images

The majority of Afghans do not consider women's education a "Western value," but see improvements in women's education as one of the biggest achievements of the past 10 years. Similarly, women's participation in public life is not a new reality to Afghans. I come from a village in northeast Afghanistan, and my father's father, a local mullah, built the first school in his village. My maternal aunt traveled and lived alone in another province to go to university in 1971-72.

The fight for improved education and democracy is not a recent phenomenon funded by the West; in fact it's insulting to Afghans to suggest so. Afghans have struggled for democracy since the early 20th century.
Kamilah Ataee wrote on Facebook:
Since 2002, Afghan women have found a chance to start getting education and work outside of their houses once again. We, Afghan women, are very grateful of Western ways in Afghanistan. Today, we need to live as global citizens not as villagers!

Aarya Nijat, a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, lives and works in Kabul.
Afghanistan of today, in whatever shape that it is, would not have been possible without Amanullah Khan's attempt at reformation in the 1920s and the "Decade of Democratization" of 1960-1970. Today's Constitution is based on the Constitution of 1964. So the seeds of the nascent democracy that we have today were sown roughly half a century ago, in this country and by the people of this country. We own what and where we are today.

This is not to deny, I must emphasize, the facilitating role of the international community, in particular in the past decade. External players can only facilitate or influence processes of internal change; they cannot cause them. To be fair, we own both our achievements and losses, that is we give neither the credit nor the blame away.
Masih Mas wrote on Facebook:
As an Afghan, I would say yes, certain Western values and laws would be a welcomed addition to Afghanistan. We must remember that the most peaceful and prosperous times during Afghanistan's history were under Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan's secular government that kept the tribal and religious problems at a far distance. Many members in Karzai's government are religious warlords who have immense influence in Afghan culture. The average Afghan who supports these warlords does not realize that the same person has killed thousands of innocent Afghans and is involved in drug trafficking, corruption and fraud.
Atta Nasib wrote on Facebook:
It is wrong to assume that Afghan society is reluctant to embrace reforms. Let's not forget that it's only been a decade since the Taliban were removed from power and democracy took root.

Younger Afghans are caught in the cross-fire between modernity that comes with democracy and traditional values that are still practiced in general throughout the country. As older cohorts die, so will traditional values.

And modern education is still at its infancy in Afghanistan. It will likely take a generation of Afghans to remove cultural barriers when it comes to women's progress in particular. It took nearly two centuries to realize universal suffrage in the United States.

Ali Mohammad A wrote on Facebook:
Your note makes me want to send you my mother's photos from the '70s, wearing a miniskirt in Kandahar. I will only e-mail you my thoughts.

Young Afghan men and women attended a rock concert this summer in Kabul. Credit... Christoph Bangert for The New York Times

Javed Rezayee, an Afghan who was born and raised in Kabul and works in New York with the Open Society Foundations' Regional Policy Initiative on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I've watched my country transform over the last decade. There have been a series of occasions that marked a range of landmark changes in the Afghan psyche. In early 2002, my jaw dropped when for the first time I watched a man criticizing President Karzai on TV. It was a moment of elation mixed with a chilling fear of what my father said happened under previous regimes when outspoken government critics "disappeared with their families." Today, many young women are participating in sports, and millions are in school, which means millions of parents are approving of female education. The illiteracy rate is fast decreasing, including for women.

Challenges remain. The rise of the neo-fundamentalist groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir is a disconcerting reality. Earlier this year, the group staged a never-before-seen demonstration against women's rights in Kabul University, where alarmingly the Taliban flag was raised. In June, the Afghan Parliament eviscerated the possibility of endorsing the Elimination of Violence Against Women Law that was favorably decreed by President Karzai years ago. Earlier this month, women's parliamentary quota was lowered and the only single seat previously reserved for Hindu and Sikh minorities was eliminated during the passing of the elections laws.

The struggle between leaders of change and forces of reversion will continue, perhaps forever, but what has irreversibly been internalized by Afghan youth is the increasing sense of freedom. The genie of freedom is out and cannot be put back in the teapot.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Afghans Share Their Views on the West's Influence (Published 2013)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The United States and its allies have worked for a decade to instill democratic and legal reforms in Afghanistan, with a particular focus on women's rights. We asked Afghans through this Facebook note to share their views on the West's influence in their country. We received responses via e-mail and Facebook.

# data[].attributes.body
This surce I considered very important, since it was a primary source. This was due to the fact that the writers copied the original writen in 1973 into a virtual copy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Credit... The New York Times Archives

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

NEW DELHI, July 17‐‐‐The mountainous kingdom of Afghanistan was proclaimed a republic today in a coup d'etat led by a brother‐in‐law of King Mohammad Zahir

Shah, who is on a visit to Italy.

Lieut. Gen. Mohammad Daud Khan said in a broadcast that he had led the coup to replace the "corrupt and effete" rule of the King with a "genuine democracy" and to save the country from ruin.

Within an hour, the country of 15 million people - largely farmers and herdsmen - was placed under martial law. Be tween periods of martial music, the Kabul radio proclaimed the loyalty of the army and asked the people to cooperate with the "military Government."

There was no mention of the fate of the royal family or the members of the ousted Govern ment of Premier Mohammad Musa Shafiq.

[Zahir Shah, who was on the island of Ischia near Naples since July 8 for a vacation and mineral water digestive treatments, went to Rome after hearing of the coup, United Press International reported.]

In his broadcast, General Daud, who is 64 years old and a cousin as well as brother‐in law of the King, pledged that Afghanistan would continue her policy of nonalignment and would not join any military pact.

The nation, which depends heavily on foreign aid, has re ceived substantial assistance under Zahir Shah from its neighbors, the Soviet Union and. China, and from the United States. Its armed forces are equipped mostly by the Soviet Union.

Key points in Kabul, the, Afghan capital, were reported under military guard, but the city was said to be quiet. Dip lomatic sources in New Delhi said, however, that they had heard that there had been small‐arms fire and explosions during the day, with jets patrol ling the skies.

American Embassy sources here said they had received re ports of shooting at the King's palace and of a rebel assault on the house of the King's son in‐law, Prince Abdul Malik, commander of the palace guard. The Prince was said to be under arrest along with the Defense Minister, Lieut. Gen. Khan Mohammad.

An American Embassy report also said that there had been exchanges of fire at the police headquarters and that busloads of policemen were seen being taken away under military es cort.

Afghanistan appeared virtu ally sealed off from the outside world. There were reports that the Kabul airport was closed and closely guarded, and that the telephone lines were cut.

The deposed king, who is 59 years old, had occupied the throne of his landlocked cen tral Asian country since 1933, when his father was assassi nated. Zahir Shah was 19 at the time, and for many years there after he was a near prisoner of his uncles and cousins. General Daud was Premier from 1953 to 1963, the last decade of the King's reign as a figurehead.

In 1963, the King shook off the restrainig influences shook of ousted General Daud. In 1965 he set up a constitutional mon archy with the King retaining paramount power, including the power to nominate the Premier.

In his radio address, Gen eral Daud today attacked this form of Government as a "pseudodemocracy."

He said he and his support ers acted to oust the King when they 'decided there was no hope for political reform. He said that the Government had become corrupt "to such an extent that there was no longer any hope of reform ing it."

Discontent Over Famine

There has been much dis content in Afghanistan over Government efforts to deal with a famine brought on by a three‐year drought. More than 80,000 people are said to have died in the famine.

The discontent led to a change of Cabinet last Decem ber, with Premier Shafiq taking over from Premier Abdul Zahir.

Political discontent has long existed in Afghanistan, where political parties have been outlawed. Unofficial political groupings of like‐minded figures have existed but have been kept in check by appointees to Par liament named by Zahir Shah.

Under the 1965 constitution, a parliament was established made up of a House of Elders, a third of whose 84 members were chosen by the King and the rest elected, and a House of the People, with 215 elected members.

Recent Afghan administra tions have pledged strong action to prevent the country from be coming a target for interna tional drug smugglers. Kabul, however, has become known for its street sales of hashish and has become a major attraction for Western hippies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Afghan King Overthrown; A Republic Is Proclaimed (Published 1973)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Afganistan is proclaimed repub on July 17 in coup led by former Premier, Lt Gen Mohammad Daud Khan, brother-in-law of King Mohammad Zahir Shah, who is on visit to Italy; Daud says in radio broadcast that he led coup to replace 'corrupt and effete' rule of Zahir Shah with 'genuine

# data[].attributes.body
This gale source will give more information about the soviet invasion as a whole, what is was like, causes/effects..etc.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Citation metadata

Document controls

Main content

Page 37

AFGHANISTAN, SOVIET INVASION OF. At the end of December 1979, Soviet troops moved into Afghanistan, setting off an international crisis. The situation had been building since April 1978, when a coup led by the pro-Soviet Armed Forces Military Council installed a Marxist government under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki. Rebel groups resisted, and fighting intensified. In February 1979, rebel forces kidnapped U.S. ambassador Adolph Dubs, who died in a shoot-out between the rebels and government forces. In September 1979, Taraki resigned after a bitter power struggle, and the government passed into the hands of Hafizullah Amin. After barely two months in office, Amin was replaced by Babrak Karmal, who had invited the intervention of Soviet troops and who was supported by Moscow. The Soviet government insisted that it was sending in a "limited military contingent" to repel aggression from abroad.

The U.S. government denounced the Soviet invasion. While aiding the rebels with advisers and arms, the administration of President Jimmy Carter curtailed U.S. grain shipments to the Soviet Union, cut off sales of high-technology equipment, and imposed limits on Soviet fishing privileges in U.S. waters. Carter's most publicized action was to forbid participation by U.S. athletes in the Olympic Games held in Moscow during the summer of 1980. In what is known as his "Evil Empire" speech, President Ronald Reagan in 1982 noted that it was not democratic nations that had invaded Afghanistan. He referred to forces seeking conflict in the world as "totalitarian evil." The Reagan administration supplied the Afghan rebels with Stinger surface-to-air missiles, which substantially reduced the effectiveness of Soviet airpower in the war.

The Afghan war was a great drain on the Soviet military, and it cost the Soviet regime significant international prestige. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew the last Soviet troops in February 1989. After the Cold War ended in 1990, the United States turned its interest away from Afghanistan, and the increasingly fundamentalist Islamic nation slid into the second phase of a civil war that had begun in 1978.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arnold, Anthony. Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Perspective. Rev. and enl. ed. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1985.

Page 38

Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Alfred E. Senn/A. G.

Source Citation

Gale Document Number: GALE|CX3401800049

Google Drive™

OneDrive™

Email

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Page 37 AFGHANISTAN, SOVIET INVASION OF. At the end of December 1979, Soviet troops moved into Afghanistan, setting off an international crisis. The situation had been building since April 1978, when a coup led by the pro-Soviet Armed Forces Military Council installed a Marxist government under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki.

# data[].attributes.body
Another gale source that gives historical background about the Soviet-Afghan War and refugees (why people had to flee).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Citation metadata

Document controls

Main content

Page 675

Introduction

Afghan refugees are Afghan nationals, or citizens, who escaped war, persecution, and violence in their home country for safe haven in another country. Afghanistan is a poor, ethnically diverse nation in South Asia located between Iran to the west and Pakistan to the east. In the late 1970s Afghanistan began producing more refugees than any other nation in the world. This trend continued until Syria eclipsed it in 2014. At the height of the Afghan refugee crisis in 1989, there were 6.2 million Afghan refugees living outside of their homeland, mostly residing in Pakistan and Iran, according to a CNN report in 1999.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Afghans fled the violent occupation of their country by the Soviet Union. During the 1990s Afghans fled the Taliban, a militant and ultraconservative religious and political group that rose to power in the nation. After it became known that the Taliban was providing sanctuary to al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), the United States ousted the Taliban from power. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees, many of whom had been in exile for decades, returned home. But growing political instability and the return of the Taliban toward the end of the first decade of the 21st century and throughout the 2010s forced Afghans to flee the country again. Ethnicity, religion, and wealth in large part determined where Afghans chose to migrate.

In 2017 Afghan refugees had relatively little support from Pakistan or Iran or the broader international community. In years prior the European Union (EU) had increasingly rejected Afghans' applications for asylum. In 2016 the EU announced a plan to deport Afghans from Europe. Meanwhile, Pakistan stated that it would repatriate all of its Afghan refugees by the end of 2017, another blow to the safety and well-being of Afghanistan's refugee population.

Historical Background

The United Nations (UN) 1951 Refugee Convention (also known as the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees) is the foundational international law that defines the legal meaning of the word refugee. According to the convention, refugees are people who have been "forced to flee" from their country of origin and have a "well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group." People who apply to a foreign government for refugee status but have yet to receive it are known as asylum seekers.

Refugees from the Soviet Occupation

The seeds of Afghanistan's first refugee crisis were planted in 1978, when Afghan prime minister Mohammad Daud Khan (1909-1978) was deposed by Noor Mohammad Taraki (1917-1979). Taraki was a leader of the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which was supported by the Soviet Union. He served as prime minister of Afghanistan for 16 months. Despite assistance from the Soviet Union, Taraki had a short term that was marked by infighting within his ruling party and by strong resistance from militant Islamist groups known as mujahideen. Taraki was deposed and killed upon the order of his colleague Hafizullah Amin (1929-1979), who ruled Afghanistan for four months in 1979 before being killed in December when the Soviet Union sent 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. The volatility in Afghanistan during the Taraki and Amin administrations prompted approximately 600,000 Afghans to leave the country by 1979. Most of these refugees (400,000) fled to Pakistan, and most of the rest fled to Iran.

The Soviet Union quickly replaced Amin with Babrak Karmal (1929-1996). Karmal's Soviet-sponsored rise to power and the entrance of Soviet troops to the country Page 676 marked Afghanistan's transition from a somewhat autonomous (self-governing) nation to a client state, or a weaker nation that receives support from a stronger one. The presence of Soviet ground forces did little to hamper the armed rebellions of the mujahideen. They continued to strongly oppose communist policies, which were sometimes at odds with Islamic traditions, and rejected Soviet interference in Afghan national affairs. The United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, which were eager to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring more territory, abetted the mujahideen's fight. The United States, for example, spent $2 billion to arm the group.

Sidebar: Hide Show

WORDS TO KNOW

ASYLUM:

The protection given by a nation to a refugee who has fled his or her native country in order to escape harm.

ASYLUM SEEKERS:

Foreign nationals who apply to a government for refugee status but have yet to receive approval.

BRAIN DRAIN:

Emigration of a significant number of highly skilled and highly educated people from a country.

DEPORTATION:

The forced removal of a foreign national from a country, often resulting in the return of the person to his or her home country.

EXILE:

To be excluded, banned, barred, or banished from a particular place, country, or location.

FUNDAMENTALISM:

A belief in strict, literal adherence to religious or political laws or principles.

INFRASTRUCTURE:

The structures and facilities needed for a society to operate, such as roads, power supplies, water systems, and bridges.

1951 REFUGEE CONVENTION:

Also known as the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees; the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' key legal document signed by 155 states. This document contains a definition of the term refugee as well as rights of the displaced and the obligations of governments to protect them.

REPATRIATE:

To send someone back to his or her country of origin.

SHIITE:

A Muslim of the Shia denomination of Islam, which holds that the first caliph, the religious successor to the prophet Muhammad, was the prophet's son-in-law and cousin, Ali.

The Soviets, unable to quash the nationwide uprisings, tried to suppress rural Afghans' support of the mujahideen through violent tactics, which included bombing civilians. This sparked a large-scale flow of Afghan refugees out of the country. About 4.3 million had fled the country by the end of 1982, with 2.8 million immigrating to Pakistan and 1.5 million to Iran. Wealthy Afghans were likelier to flee to western European nations while poorer Afghans fled to neighboring countries. They also moved to the United States, Canada, and Australia. There they formed expatriate communities that were both culturally and politically active and that influenced Afghanistan. For example, the pop music of Afghan refugee and UK resident Aryana Sayeed is popular in Afghanistan, and she regularly performs there.

After about 10 years of war, there was still a stalemate between the mujahideen and the Soviets. The millions of Afghan refugees living in exile in Pakistan and Iran were the beneficiaries of social welfare and were also permitted to work, albeit only in approved, low-wage positions. Both male and female Afghan refugees received a good education in Iran, and schooling for both genders contributed to changes in gender dynamics among Afghan refugees. The Soviet Union withdrew its troops in 1989, after 10 years of occupation and the death of about 1.5 million Afghans.

Refugees from the Taliban

During the 1990s about two-thirds of the refugees who had fled the Soviet occupation returned to areas in Afghanistan that were not conflict zones. By the end of the decade, about 2.6 million refugees had not returned to their home country. Reasons for remaining in Pakistan or Iran included the dire poverty and lack of structures and facilities such as roads and water systems present in Afghanistan, coupled with the unrelenting conflict between factions of mujahideen.

The communist government left in place after the Soviet exit was toppled by mujahideen groups in 1992 and replaced by a transitional government. However, attempts at peaceful governance were dashed by infighting among the mujahideen. The Taliban, which formed in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, curried the support of Afghanistan's Pashtuns, an ethnic group that lives in southern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, and quickly wrested control of large swaths of southern Afghanistan. By 1994 about 700,000 Afghans had left the country to avoid the civil war being waged between guerrilla groups. Page 677 Other Afghans, instead of leaving the country, moved from their homes to safer regions in Afghanistan.

In 1996, after violent clashes between the Taliban and government forces that killed civilians and destroyed buildings, the Taliban seized the capital city of Kabul. Although major world powers did not formally recognize the Taliban as the leader of Afghanistan, the group governed most of the country until 2001. In addition to imposing strict Islamic law throughout the nation, the Taliban welcomed militant Islamists from other nations to Afghanistan. Most prominently, Osama bin Laden (1957-2011), the leader of al-Qaeda, received permission from the Taliban to live in Afghanistan beginning in 1996.

As the Taliban increased its control, many Afghans were forced to flee to safety in other countries. According to Hiram A. Ruiz in a 2002 article for Forced Migration Review, a large portion of Kabul's intellectuals, including teachers, health-care professionals, and government employees, escaped the Taliban's fundamentalism by leaving the country. In addition, non-Pashtun ethnic groups also left the country. For example, the Hazaras, a Shiite ethnic group who speak Persian, fled to Persian-speaking Iran.

As in the past, most of the Afghan refugees sought asylum in Pakistan. In the late 1990s and into the next decade, Pakistan became overburdened by the nearconstant inflow of Afghans since 1978, and it began to deport Afghans who could not afford to pay off police. Despite this, Afghans continued to escape to Pakistan. In 2000 alone about 172,000 Afghans traveled to Pakistan to escape fighting in the northern portion of the country.

Refugees from Post-9/11 Afghanistan

After the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States, Americans demanded that the Taliban hand over bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks, but they refused to do so. After military pressure, which included air strikes and troops on the ground, the United States ousted the Taliban from power in December 2001, although they did not find bin Laden. With the Taliban forced out and the formation of a new democratic government, refugees from the Soviet occupation and from the Taliban began to return to Afghanistan. Between March and October 2002, about 1.2 million moved back to Afghanistan. By October 2006 the number of returnees had climbed to 2.6 million. Many contributed to Afghanistan's cultural and political life, such as Saad Mohseni (1966-), who created the influential Afghan television channel Tolo TV.

Page 678

Although the Taliban was officially ousted in 2001 by US-led forces, the group was not defeated, and it continued to resist the newly formed Afghan government. Beginning in 2008 the number of refugees from Afghanistan, which had declined since the removal of the Taliban and the entry of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and US forces, began to increase again. By 2015 the number of refugees from Afghanistan had climbed to 2.6 million. Many left to escape the increasingly violent conflict between the Taliban and Afghan government forces, as well as the 2014 entrance of the militant jihadist group the Islamic State (ISIS), which had already seized control of portions of Iraq and Syria.

Impacts and Issues

Large outflows of refugees from Afghanistan since 1978 have caused a brain drain, according to a 2014 report by the International Organization for Migration. As of 2017 Afghanistan's infrastructure was crumbling, yet there were few Afghan professionals available to upgrade it. The country also lacked qualified physicians and other health-care workers, as well as educators. The report noted that talented Afghans who left the country rarely returned. Instead, these Afghans sought betterpaid jobs in more stable countries.

Pakistan, home to the largest population of Afghan refugees, began the process of trying to eject large populations of Afghan refugees in the early 21st century by detaining or deporting newly arrived refugees. In addition to enduring the harsh conditions of Pakistan's refugee camps, many were also increasingly subject to harassment by police officers and the ire of Pakistanis opposed to the continued presence of Afghans in the country. In 2016 Pakistan announced that it would repatriate all Afghan nationals by 2017. Early that year it remained unclear how the law would be enforced. In general, Afghan refugees from Pakistan who returned home struggled to find housing and secure employment. Observers have noted that massive inflows of Afghans from Pakistan would likely increase home and job insecurity.

Pakistan and Iran have historically housed the vast majority of Afghan refugees since 1968. The EU has received only a small percentage of Afghan refugees, though in 2015 about 200,000 Afghans made the perilous trek from South Page 679 Asia to Europe. Overwhelmed by the sharp increase in refugees from South Asia, the Middle East, and Northern Africa, the EU issued a new policy in 2016 that allows European nations to deport Afghan asylum seekers. Because Afghanistan was no longer considered an active war zone like Syria or Iraq, the EU deemed it appropriate to deport Afghans who do not meet the strict legal criteria for refugee status.

Patricia Gossman, the senior researcher on Afghanistan at the nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch, decried the actions of the EU in a 2017 opinion piece: "Germany and other EU member states should stop deporting rejected Afghan asylum seekers until it is clear how the Afghan government copes with Pakistan's mass forced return of refugees. They should not detain Afghans but instead grant them the most favorable status possible under national law." Because the EU gives priority to asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, and Eritrea over those from other nations, Afghan asylum seekers' applications for refugee status are statistically less likely to be approved.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ruiz, Hiram A., and Margaret Emery. "Afghanistan's Refugee Crisis." Middle East Research and Information Project, September 24, 2001. http://www.merip.org/mero/mero092401 (accessed February 7, 2017).

Source Citation

Gale Document Number: GALE|CX3662200133

Google Drive™

OneDrive™

Email

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Page 675 Afghan refugees are Afghan nationals, or citizens, who escaped war, persecution, and violence in their home country for safe haven in another country. Afghanistan is a poor, ethnically diverse nation in South Asia located between Iran to the west and Pakistan to the east.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
About Gale In Context: High School

Explore thousands of topics across subjects including literature, science, history, and social issues using different sources.

Don't know how to login?

Depending on this location's preferences, the log-in process could include your library card number, a student or user ID, or another provided password. If you don't know how to log in, please contact your library or school directly.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
About Gale In Context: High School Explore thousands of topics across subjects including literature, science, history, and social issues using different sources. Don't know how to login? Depending on this location's preferences, the log-in process could include your library card number, a student or user ID, or another provided password.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
About Gale In Context: Global Issues

Analyze important global issues and events through topic overviews, international viewpoints, news, and multimedia content.

Don't know how to login?

Depending on this location's preferences, the log-in process could include your library card number, a student or user ID, or another provided password. If you don't know how to log in, please contact your library or school directly.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
About Gale In Context: Global Issues Analyze important global issues and events through topic overviews, international viewpoints, news, and multimedia content. Don't know how to login? Depending on this location's preferences, the log-in process could include your library card number, a student or user ID, or another provided password.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A 1971 map (from FCO 37/1154) showing the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan. Agreements between Russia and British India in 1873 and 1893 established the corridor as a buffer between the two empires. Image © The National Archives, UK. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. King Zahir Shah (left) and Mohammad Daoud Khan (right) (image: James A. Cudney).

From John Drinkall's report 'Afghanistan: Fall of the monarchy', 7 August 1973 (FCO 37/1218). Image © The National Archives, UK. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
It was in the early 1970s that Afghanistan entered into the spiral of governmental instability, insurgency, outright civil war and foreign interventions that has plagued it to the present day. Amongst the dozens of Afghan-focused files in our resource Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan two which date from the regime of Mohammad Daoud Khan, president from 1973 to 1978, shed light both on the circumstances under which he came to power and, with some considerable prescience, on the potential for instability and Soviet intervention which it was feared might follow the end of his rule.

Daoud Khan was of royal birth, the cousin of King Zahir Shah, and had served as prime minister between 1953 and 1963. After a political crisis caused by a border dispute with Pakistan Daoud was forced from office, and Afghanistan entered a period of ineffectual pseudo-parliamentarism, with six prime ministers coming and going over the next decade at the king's behest. In July 1973 Daoud, backed by the army, overthrew Zahir whilst he was abroad. In a dispatch to London the following month the British ambassador in Kabul, John Drinkall, mused on the reasons for Zahir's downfall, and placed the blame squarely on his own and his family's shoulders. Having acknowledged that the king was "a very nice person and seemed genuinely to have the welfare of his people at heart", Drinkall went on to catalogue the whole dynasty's failings:

From 'Afghanistan: Valedictory despatch' by John Drinkall, 20 January 1976 (FCO 37/1685). Image © The National Archives, UK. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
The only member of the royal family to escape censure was the king's elder daughter, Princess Bilqis, whom Drinkall described as "as remarkable as the others are not". But it was not plausible that a woman should succeed to the Afghan throne, and anyway the political system had been broken. Although the average Afghan's expectations of the state were so nugatory that general discontent could not have led to revolution, a sense of chronic frustration with the regime's shortcomings amongst powerful figures in the bureaucracy and army had provoked a change of personnel at the top - something which his embassy had, Drinkall claims, been predicting for some years, with the result that "the British reputation for omniscience in this part of the world is now in the process of receiving an additional fillip".
From 'Afghanistan: Valedictory despatch' by John Drinkall, 20 January 1976 (FCO 37/1685). Image © The National Archives, UK. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Yet the next question which would soon occupy British minds was: who, or what, would follow Daoud? By the time Drinkall was preparing to leave Kabul, in January 1976, Daoud's regime, though apparently secure, had not yet been formalised; the government would announce consultations on a new constitution only that March. But Drinkall's biggest worry harked back to the Great Game of the nineteenth century:

Fortunately for the West, the Russians were not liked by the Afghans. But they succeeded in penetrating the ruling stratum of the country because they made more effort than anyone else:

Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1947-1980 is available now. For more information, including free trial access and price enquiries, please e-mail us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
This assessment was a shrewd one. Daoud was overthrown and killed in July 1978 by the communist People's Democratic Party. But the infighting that proved rampant in the new regime, and the armed opposition its actions generated in much of the country, was such that a full-scale Soviet invasion was launched to shore it up over Christmas 1979.

Despite the overwhelming nature of the Soviets' conventional strength, opposition to them was as determined as it had been to the Afghan communists. By the time of the invasion there were 400,000 Afghan refugees in camps in Pakistan, where the authorities provided them with training and equipment to return home to fight; the CIA had already mounted Operation Cyclone, its own effort to help arm, train and inspire the opposition. Until they left Afghanistan in 1989 the Soviets never succeeded in gaining secure control of any areas beyond the major cities, and Afghanistan was flooded with the weapons, expertise and dislocation which have helped fuel the civil wars with which the country has been battered up to the present day.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Great Game Revisited: Afghanistan In The 1970s

# data[].attributes.body
This source gives me a very nice overview, on events, that took place during the time that my novel is set in.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We are Amnesty International UK. We are ordinary people from across the world standing up for humanity and human rights.

# data[].attributes.body
This source is special and I'm very happy I found it . It shows the other side of gender inequality and how toxic masculinity affects young boys. This relates more to my book because the main character is a male.

# data[].attributes.body
This is a gale source about sex roles. It's not specific to Afghanistan nor the time period but gives a general overview which is what I need to be educated on this topic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
About Gale In Context: Global Issues

Analyze important global issues and events through topic overviews, international viewpoints, news, and multimedia content.

Don't know how to login?

Depending on this location's preferences, the log-in process could include your library card number, a student or user ID, or another provided password. If you don't know how to log in, please contact your library or school directly.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
About Gale In Context: Global Issues Analyze important global issues and events through topic overviews, international viewpoints, news, and multimedia content. Don't know how to login? Depending on this location's preferences, the log-in process could include your library card number, a student or user ID, or another provided password.

# data[].attributes.body
I picked this source because it was fro a database, meaning that It will give me inly good, and reliable information.