Afghanistan was formally established as a state after the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880) to serve as a buffer between the British and Russian empires. Competition between these empires gave rise to two Anglo-Afghan wars and numerous smaller skirmishes. Consolidation of Afghanistan as a buffer state under British protection ended these clashes. After the Second Anglo-Afghan War, Britain forced Amir Abdul Rahman Khan of Afghanistan After the Second Anglo-Afghan War, Britain forced Amir Abdul Rahman Khan of Afghanistan the British Government of India.

After the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), Britain sought to create a strong monarchy in Afghanistan. The weapons and funds it supplied to Amir Abdul Rahman Khan (1880-1901) enabled the ruler to erect a sort of absolutist state, crushing over 40 revolts by the local tribal-republican forces and creating a brutal secret police force. The basic state structure he erected – a Pashtun ruler encapsulating a variety of local social structures with a nominally centralized bureaucracy and army, supported by foreign aid
for strategic reasons – largely endured until 1992.

1919-1929
The Amir's grandson, King Amanullah Khan, becomes King and declared independence from the British thereby losing the British subsidy. He was a modern-thinking man, an Afghani Attaturk, who had visited Europe many times and saw the stark differences between his country and his in terms of industrial development. He scandalized the ulama when he unveiled his wife in public. He also forced men to wear suits and ties. Gained some enemies because of his modern views.

1929
Amanullah’s failure to find an alternative source of revenue and military aid left him defenceless when tribes and religious movements mobilized against his state-building efforts in 1928. He was driven out of power by was driven from power by Bacha Saqao – a non-Pashtun, Tajik. Lasted less than a year.

1930
The British supported the establishment of a new dynasty, under one of Amanullah's former generals, Nadir Shah. Nadir Shah was assassinated in 1933 and succeeded by his 19-year old son, Zahir Shah, who reigned until 1973. His

1933-73
King Zahir Shah. Relatively peaceful rule and Afghanistan progressed slowly, though rural areas remained essentially the same as they had been for centuries. the King did not interfere with village/regional leaders: left them pretty much alone, as they wanted. His cousin, Daoud Shah, became Prime Minister in 1953. More liberal towards women (see below in women’s section). But political class remained tiny and nepotism prevailed. In 1964, Zahir Shah introduced limited reforms that made him a constitutional monarch and gave parliament some control over policy.
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The Cold War provided new opportunities to the rulers of Afghanistan. During the 1950s, Prime Minister Daoud, played on the country's renewed status as a buffer – now between the USSR and the U.S.-sponsored Baghdad Pact (later CENTO) – to build an expanded state apparatus with foreign aid from both the Cold War antagonists. He began programmes of building roads, schools, and development projects. All of these increased the mobility of both people and products.

The Soviet Union, Afghanistan's northern neighbour, became the major aid provider, in particular by sponsoring the recruitment and equipping of a 100,000-strong army.

Nonaligned Afghanistan had turned to the Soviet Union for military aid after the U.S. had refused to consider such aid. The U.S. had recruited Afghanistan's new neighbour, Pakistan, into both CENTO and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Pakistan and Afghanistan pursued a bitter dispute over "Pashtunistan," as the Afghan Government called the areas of Northwest Pakistan inhabited by Pashtuns, who, it argued, should enjoy the right to self-determination.

Until the mid-1970s, the U.S. and USSR competed for influence over a regime they both supported rather than backing political factions seeking to replace it.

In 1973, however, Daoud overthrew his cousin Zahir Shah in a coup d'état, abolished the monarchy, and proclaimed himself President.

Both superpowers, as well as regional states, feared that the abolition of the monarchy without the institutionalization of an alternative political system could provoke a future succession crisis. In Southwest Asia, the Shah of Iran took on the role of proxy for U.S. interests. He tried to use his oil wealth to draw Afghanistan into a regional grouping under his leadership. What the U.S. and Iran saw as legitimate manoeuvering for influence in the interests of stability, the Soviet Union perceived as a threat. The increasing tensions affected foreign powers' attitudes toward domestic political forces in Afghanistan. Both the USSR and Pakistan, the latter with U.S. support, increased their aid to political groups challenging the Afghan regime, the Communists and Islamic movements, respectively.

Mohammad Daoud's coup d'état against Zahir Shah represented the first time the government in Afghanistan was overthrown not by a rural-based tribal uprising but by professional military officers. These officers, trained in the Soviet Union, some of them members or sympathizers of Parcham, constituted part of the first generation of the newly educated.

Movements within Afghanistan during 1973-1979

The principal Soviet-oriented Communist organization in Afghanistan was the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), founded in 1965.

In 1967 the party split into two factions that constituted distinct political and social groups.:

Many of the leaders of both groups had studied or received military training in the USSR, and the Soviets pressured the factions to reunite in 1977.

[A nascent Islamist movement that originated around Kabul university, with Rabbani, Sayyaf and Massoud emerging as Islamist leaders. Daoud moved quickly to repress the Islamic movement. Some of its leaders were arrested, and the rest fled to Peshawar, capital of the mainly Pashtun Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, where there they received aid from the Government of Pakistan. The latter, headed by Premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, did not sympathize with the Islamists' ideology but wanted to use the movements to pressure Daoud over the Pashtunistan issue. Thus began a pattern that persists to this day, with Pakistan using Islamic movements in Afghanistan to pressure the authorities in Kabul or as a means to try and install a more friendly government].

Between 1973-78 many coups and changes of power occurred. Two main parties jostled for power: Parcham and Khalq.

1979

In February 1979, the Shah of Iran, the main pillar of Western security policy in the Persian Gulf, was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution. The government of the Soviet Union expected strong reaction from Washington to events in Iran, such as an attempt to install a pro-American government in Kabul with Pakistan's assistance. To forestall this, the Soviet Union carried out a defensively motivated aggressive act: in December 1979, they sent a "limited contingent" of troops to take control of Afghanistan.

By 1981, the Soviet troop presence stabilized at about 105,000. The Soviet troops and the regime they protected carried out massive repression, including systematic torture of thousands of detainees by the secret police, the Khat, headed by Mohammad Najibullah, and indiscriminate bombing of rural areas. These policies created a
mass flood of refugees into Pakistan and Iran in the early 1980s.

[It is notable that both superpowers expended far more resources in the Afghanistan conflict than they had ever devoted to cooperation for development. ]

The occupation of Afghanistan gave the US the excuse they needed to launch full scale attack against the Soviets. This was done covertly.

Soviet war: 1979-1989

It is now well known that the US funded the war against the Soviets using Islam as its rallying cry and muslim mercenaries together with Afghans as its foot soldiers. The US saw the potential of a vast unified force, with the authority of religion and God behind them: this was the only force big and vital enough to defeat the Soviets. They branded the war “a holy war”, recruiting young muslim men, mostly uneducated and unemployed, from around the world in the name of Islam to fight the ‘communist infidels” . These men were paid a monthly stipend that far exceeded any wages they could have earned at home. Using the ISI, the Pakistan secret service, as it’s filter, the CIA poured around 6 billion dollars into this effort, making it one of the largest covert undertakings ever. In their zeal to defeat the Soviets, they encouraged Islamic fundamentalism to flourish, with little heed to the price or the consequences.

Initially funds for arms were given to Egyptians who bought Russian Kalishnikovs from China, shipped to Egypt and then funnelled to the rebels. This was to hide US implication in the buying of arms. However, later, the CIA gave money directly to Pakistan who became the administrators of the proxy war. The Saudis also gave money to the rebels.

The rise of the Fundamentalists/Islamists

There were thousands of Afghans who genuinely fought, without being paid, to liberate their country, and who were not aligned with any of the fundamentalist groups. However it was the fundamentalist groups that were given training, funding and arms, raised by the CIA, through Pakistan’s powerful intelligence unit, Inter Service Intelligence ( ISI), who had their own interests in mind. The ISI wanted to establish a friendly government in Afghanistan that would unite with them against India, and so focussed their sights on funding ultra orthodox Islamic parties. Secular nationalist parties found no foreign support and hence died out.

7 major fundamentalist parties were formed: before the Soviet occupation, these groups and their leaders were of little significance, viewed as fringe elements, outside the mainstream and with little support. However, these groups received the bulk of US funding and so grew into large, well-armed, well-trained units with mercenaries pouring in to swell their ranks. Their vision of Islam was extremely narrow, anti-education, anti-women, anti-West. This was ignored by the CIA, who in their zeal to defeat the Soviets turned a blind eye.

The seven included: Gulbuddin Hekmatyr. Hekmatyr was known for throwing acid in the faces of women who were unveiled, for slicing their breasts off, and for many other atrocities against men and women. It was to him that the lion’s share of funding went. (Now it is Hekmatyr’s forces, joined with the Taliban who are causing much havoc in southern Afghanistan today. In the last week over 60 people have been killed in the fighting)

Ahmed Shah Massoud (who led what was later to be known as the Northern Alliance), Rabbani, Sayyaf, Dostum, and Ishmael Khan were some of the other leaders of fundamentalist parties at this time. Dostum controlled the North, Ishmael Khan controlled the West and rec’d funding probably from Iran. China, India also contributed to a lesser degree. But it was to orthodox Sunni muslims, that most of Saudi Arabia’s and US’ funding went. Rebel fighters, known as the ‘mujahideen’ had to belong to one of these groups to receive any arms or money. Refugees too, in Pakistan, had to belong to one of these groups in order to receive official papers, shelter in one of the refugee camps, and aid.

It is estimated that only about 10% of the $6 billion ever got to the Afghans – the other 90% went into the bank accounts of Pakistani military officials and other middlemen. Although the CIA knew this, it was part of the bargain.

Madrassas

The people who comprised the mujahideen and later the Jehadi parties were basically educated in madrassas. Madrassas are religious schools have had a tradition of debating philosphical topics as well as religious ones, a tradition of rigorous intellectualism. Not so with the fundamentalist madrassas. Funded covertly by the CIA, they had one mission, to trained the boys in fighting machines for the jihad. They were not taught any other subjects, but to learn the Koran by rote in arabic which they did not understand. The boys were poor, from large families, where even a meal a day could not be expected. The madrassas offered not only 3 meals a day, but shelter, blankets in the winter, and clothing. The boys they grew up without any contact with women, not even their mothers or sisters. They had no knowledge of Afghan history or culture, no geography, economics, science, administrative skills, governance, etc. They had no outside news, no radio or television, no newspapers, books, no outside contact of any kind. Growing up in wartime, they had no knowledge of what life was like in a peaceful Afghanistan. They knew only an extremely distorted interpretation of islam and “the language of the gun”. So thousands of boys grew up in these conditions, taught to fight, and believing themselves to be soldiers of God. No other opportunities were presented to these boys: no other educational ones. The Pk government welcomed madrassas as they alleviated the government’s responsibility to provide education for the poor and also supplied fighters for the Kashmir conflict. At a certain age, the boys were sent out to fight for the fundamentalist parties.

Withdrawal of Soviets/ Civil war or ‘jehadi’ period, 1990-1996

Once the Soviets were ousted, the US made no effort to repatriate the mercenaries to their own countries. They also made no effort to collect the arms , so the country remained flooded with weapons. The US also made no effort to help in re-building: they just left the country. Though they did continue to give some money to the different Islamist groups. The Islamic fundamentalists were thus allowed to flourish unchecked. Rabbani took power in 1992 under a United Nations charter, but the other leaders did not accept his rule, with the results that the Islamist parties, trained by the CIA, funded and armed to the teeth, fell into fighting amongst themselves. Massoud who joined with Rabbani, fought vehemently against Hekmatyr. Hekmatyr in turn was invited to join the governing coalition but refused. He savagely attacked Kabul and it was at this time that Kabul was virtually razed to the ground by rockets and shellings. Massoud contributed to this also. ( Under Soviet rule, Kabul remained virtually untouched, and even had better infrastructure than before).

The result was that for those four years, 1992-96, chaos ruled in Afghanistan, and the brutalities, atrocities on all sides were relentless as they were horrendous. Infrastructure was attacked. Irrigation channels were completely destroyed ensuring that farmers could not get water for their crops. The level of terror cannot be overstated, people constantly feared for their lives, with incessant rocket shellings, bombings, random murders, rapes and abductions, especially of women. There was no security and no law. Millions of Afghans fled to neighboring Pakistan and Iran to escape the mayhem. This is why, in 1996 when the Taliban offered peace and security, they were at first welcomed by many Afghans. It was all too soon, however, that the true nature of the Taliban emerged –
It is not known exactly from where the Taliban originated, though when they did emerge as a viable force, Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto ( p.m at the time) put her full support behind them, switching from the favored Hekmatyr. There is no doubt that the Taliban gained most of their initial support – money, arms and expertise - from Pk’s ISI.