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| Afghanistan |
| Nadeem F. Paracha: Marx And The Mujahideen |
| 2017-06-05 |
| Paracha is discussing his friend Yousaf, who ran off to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan... [DAWN] In 2011, Jonathan Steele, author and war correspondent of UK’s The Guardian published his eighth and most referenced book The Afghan Ghost. Steele puts to rest the common belief that it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 which kick-started the civil war there. A former CIA operative and later President Obama’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, wrote in his 2015 book Duty that a number of insurgent leaders who fought against the Soviets had earlier rebelled against the ‘modernist’ Afghan nationalist regime of Sardar Daud (1973-78). Gates also wrote that many of these insurgents were already being backed by the US and by the Z.A. Bhutto government in Pakistan, years before the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet forces. The claim which Steele takes the most pleasure in debunking is regarding the Islamic insurgents’ role in triggering the fall of Soviet communism. Steele quotes Morton Abramowitz, who directed the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the time, as saying that in 1985 there was great concern in Reagan’s White House that the mujahideen were actually losing the war. Abramowitz told Steele that the insurgents were losing major battles and ‘falling apart.’ According to Steele it was the new Soviet leader Gorbachev who decided to pull the plug and begin to roll back the war in Afghanistan. Steele wrote that “Gorbachev calculated that the war had become a stalemate” and was draining the Soviet economy. The Soviet economy was already under strain mainly due to failed socialist experiments. Its ultimate failure and the Soviet Union’s eventual collapse had little to do with the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. Basically the Soviet Union imploded from within. Yousaf went to Afghanistan again in 1987. He returned later that year and by the early 1990s he had become completely disillusioned by his earlier passions. I last met him in 2004 when he was moving to Nairobi with his wife and children. I handed him back the two booklets he had given me in 1986, jokingly telling him that he might still need to give his life some spiritual meaning. He laughed, then ran to his bedroom and came back with an old paperback biography of Karl Marx. He took the booklets from me and handed me the Marx bio, saying: “Thanks, and here, this is for you. These booklets and the Marx bio will remind both of us about the utter stupidity of youthful idealism.” |
| Posted by:Fred |