The Afghan Wars
The wars in Afghanistan date back to the 19th Century with Russia and the United Kingdom seeking to dominate the country to protect their interests in India and Central Asia respectively and the Afghan tribes and leaders fighting back. In 1978, the Communist Party in Afghanistan overthrew the existing government and killed its leaders, then the party leaders began killing each other and all those who opposed their agenda for the country. The local political, military, and religious leaders revolted and began an insurgency. The Afghan Communist Party asked the USSR for protection against the insurgents opposing them. In 1979, the Soviets invaded and became enmeshed in fighting guerilla warfare all over the country. The US, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia and most of the Islamic world supported the Afghan rebels, known as the mujahedeen. It took 10 years of terrible fighting before the USSR withdrew. This, in part, led to the dissolution and breakup of the USSR into its constituent Republics, of which today’s Russia is the most populous.
Between half a million and 2 million Afghan civilians were killed in the conflict between the USSR and the Afghans. Five million became refugees, mostly to Pakistan.
The US, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and others trained, financed, and armed the Afghan militants. The Saudis and Pakistanis and others trained and educated the Afghan mujahedeen through the madrassas in a perverted form of Islamic religion that glorified killing their opponents (whether fellow Muslims or not). Volunteer militants came from throughout the Islamic world to fight the “atheistic Russian Communists”. After the Russians left, the Afghan mujahadeen began fighting among themselves for dominance. The Taliban, supported by the Pakistani intelligence services, emerged victorious in the internecine struggle.
Al Qaeda built a coalition among the foreign militants who had come to Afghanistan to fight for their messianic ideals against the Russians. After the Taliban took over the government, Al Qaeda found haven in Afghanistan. It was comprised of Sunni Arabs who sought to establish a Sunni Arab caliphate from Gibraltar across North Africa throughout the Middle East, and in South Asia, reaching from the Mediterranean to Indonesia and the Philippines. It is important to understand the differences between Sunnis and Shia; they have very different Muslim beliefs and theologies. Over the centuries they have frequently been at war with each other, in very much the same fashion as Protestants and Catholics in Europe. Iran is a Shia theocracy. Al Qaeda wanted to establish a Sunni theocracy built along the medieval Sunni Arab Caliphate. It wanted to overthrow both the leaders of the secular Arab governments like Iraq and the monarchical governments like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
From its safe haven in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, began to develop and execute attacks on the US, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Yemen, the Sudan, Somalia, and many others. It attacked the US claiming it was supporting and sustaining the Arab governments in power. On 9/11, they succeeded in destroying the twin towers of the World Trade Center and a portion of the Pentagon. This caught the attention of the world, and Al Qaeda’s exploits reverberated among terror networks, and it metastasized among like-minded terrorists around the globe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Broader_influence The US then invaded Afghanistan, ousted the Taliban, and chased Al Qaeda leaders all over the globe, finally killing Osama Bin Laden in a safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan over ten years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Aftermath Ayman Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s successor was killed by a US missile strike on his safe house in Kabul, ten years after Bi Laden.
The US replaced the Taliban regime with an elected, selected government that proved unable to win over the overall allegiance of the Afghan people. The US spent over $2 trillion and lost 6,000 lives trying to build a successful Afghan government, but in the end the Taliban outwaited the incompetence of the US nation-building, and the inability and corruption of the Afghan government to perform its basic tasks of delivering services and security in the rural areas where Taliban insurgents ruled. Over 110,000 military and civilian Afghanis lost their lives. The US basically thought it was winning, thought the Taliban was defeatted and therefore eschewed any efforts to promote a political settlement until it was too late, and the Taliban rolled into Kabul after the US (Trump Administration) had agreed to withdraw and the Biden Administration did so. https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/11/afghanistan-was-loss-better-peace
The Taliban is now making a terrible mess of things: sidelining and depriving women and girls of educational opportunities, alienating the international donor community, terrorizing its people, and depriving them of the essentials like health care, nutrition, and education. The open question for the US is how to respond to a regime whose domestic policies we despise that nevertheless occupies a strategic position in between India, Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/23/taliban-afghanistan-diplomatic-strategy-united-states/
What is its future? It’s an impoverished nation ruined by 40 years of near constant warfare. It does not have a wealth of natural resources. Does it transform and become a beautiful, peaceful, hospitable destination for global tourism? Does it become an exporter and a haven of Sunni terrorism? Does it become a neutral Switzerland among the regional rivals? Does it develop an economy that requires an educated citizenry of all genders? Does it become an isolated hermit theocracy? Will its larger and more powerful neighbors leave it alone to develop peacefully? Does it become a failed state of competing narco warlords from different ethnicities?