RESISTING THE TALIBAN AND TALIBANISM IN AFGHANISTAN: LEGACIES OF A CENTURY OF INTERNAL COLONIALISM AND COLD WAR POLITICS IN A BUFFER STATE

Authors : M Nazif SHAHRANI

Pages : 0-0

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Publication Date : 2000-12-01

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :The Afghanistan people`s jihad victory over the Afghan Communist regimes and their Soviet Russian patrons, which lasted for a decade and a half 1978-1992 , turned quickly into a bitterly disappointing inter-ethnic sectarian war of all against all, culminating in new foreign proxy wars and the rising menace of Talibanism, which is threatening peace and stability in Central and southwestern Asia. Explanations of why the Afghan Mujahidin did not could not? translate their signal military triumph into a national political success have for the most part focused on the impact of external forces shaping events following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. For example, Zalmay Khalilzad and Daniel Byman assert: `As the United States departed [after the withdrawal of Soviet Red Army from Afghanistan in February 1989], a vicious civil war spread throughout the country. Once the Soviet-backed regime fell, war, anarchy and fragmentation followed. The conflict became increasingly one of ethnic and sectarian groups, particularly Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and the Shiah Hazaras. ... The war also became a proxy war between Iran and Pakistan, with each power backing different factions.`1 The role of outside powers and foreign forces in the factional wars of the post-jihad period 1992 to the present , while undeniable, is also more fully documented
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