I found this interview on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and rise of the Taliban via Greenwald (who incorrectly refers to ethnic Germans in Austria as a minority). What’s funny is how often the interviewer spouts a bunch of nonsense only to be corrected by the subject, eventually taking on a pleading tone for her preconceptions to be taken seriously. An entirely different Rubin gave a similar narrative in Who is Responsible for the Taliban?
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July 1, 2010 at 3:25 am
Fantastically informative interview for the 1980s period. Meanwhile Cosma Shalizi has something on how Afghanistan was before the cycle of destruction began.
And if I may assert my own preconceptions, I’d disagree with something Barnett Rubin said:
“the US, also in a paranoid way, thought that the Soviets planned to seize Afghanistan and then march on to the Persian Gulf. Neither of these perceptions was true, of course.”
I think in fact there was a Russian goal of establishing a corridor to the Gulf – whose potential strategic significance for the west had been demonstrated by the oil boycott. The first target was Iran; one should recall that leftist groups played a very large role in the revolution, and that the West assisted Khomeini’s return from exile. One should suppose that the KGB was at work on the other side.
The other factor is Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. There was a left-wing independence movement there in the late 1970s, and it is contiguous with Afghanistan. Communist Afghanistan plus an independent left-leaning Baluchistan would have provided a land corridor from the Soviet Union to the Gulf. The shah of Iran actually provided American helicopter gunships to Pakistan to help put down the Baluch insurgency; I think this is described somewhere in Rushdie’s novel Shame.
Ironically, later on Baluchistan looks to have become one of the pathways whereby arms were shipped to the Afghan mujahideen. This probably has something to do with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and “Ramzi Yousef” both being Baluch.
July 1, 2010 at 6:51 pm
I wasn’t aware of the West’s part in Khomeini’s return or Soviet involvement in the revolt. Did they still think they had a chance after Khomeini came to power?
Much of Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan is about suppressing ethnic nationalism (hence their support for salafism which serves as a rival to pushtunwali). I believe that Saddam also supported Baluchi separatists (though I could be confusing them with another ethnic minority), including a seizure of the Iranian embassy in England.
July 6, 2010 at 12:02 am
The world’s relations with Iran were soon dominated by the war with Iraq. It seems like everyone, including Russia, played both sides.
I’ve long been struck by the fact that the Cold War seemed to proceed backwards along the oil-carrying sea lanes, from East Asia (Korean war) through South-east Asia (Vietnam war) and finally to the Middle East (Iran-Iraq war, Gulf war). The American strategic idea was containment of communism by establishing alliances all around the Eurasian perimeter (thus CENTO, SEATO), and meanwhile America ruled the waves and allowed a new capitalist world-system (think Immanuel Wallerstein) to develop, with Arab oil transported around that continental perimeter fueling occupied Korea and Japan. But surely the Cold War doesn’t reduce to a series of Russian attempts to break through this perimeter, proceeding upstream to the source of the oil…?
I learnt about Iraq and the Baluch from Laurie Mylroie’s 9/11 conspiracy books. There does appear to be a history of support there, but one might want to seek independent verification of everything she says.
Selig Harrison wrote a book about Baluchistan called “In Afghanistan’s Shadow”.
July 6, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Mitchell Porter:
I’m less familiar with Russia’s involvement in the Iran-Iraq war. I know Iraq had previously been a Soviet client state (and Iran was a U.S client state under the Shah), but I don’t know much about the relations between the Soviets & Khomeini.
Your account of the Cold War seems lacking. There had already been allied involvement in the Russian Civil War, and then a proxy fight in Spain (along with some aborted attempts at establishing communist states elsewhere in Europe). Chiang Kai-Shek was supported by the Soviets, Nazis and Americans at various points in time. At the same time Truman was being blasted for losing China (perhaps with very good reason), he was implementing his containment strategy in Greece & Turkey. Stalin did acquiesce to that, just as the allies had sold out the non-communist partisans of Yugoslavia. Following WW2 there was a coup in Czechoslovakia, but the Soviets also let Austria out of their grip. Before Vietnam the major concern was of course Cuba, whose government the U.S attempted to overthrow. It was thought that communism would spread from Cuba, and Che certainly tried to fulfill those fears, but with the help of the C.I.A he and his focos were put down. There were serious threats from communists elsewhere in Latin America and the military often responded (as in Turkey & Greece) with coups, remaining upstanding U.S allies. Before Che was killed he was in charge of Cuba’s efforts to help spread revolution in Africa (particularly Angola), while the U.S and South Africa supported Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA. The commies also succeeded in Nicaragua, and so the U.S supported the contras. Additionally, during Vietnam the big threat was supposed to be that communism would spread from there to Indonesia and then perhaps to Japan and even threaten Australia. Suharto’s overthrow of Sukarno and subsequent purge of the largest communist party in any non-communist country settled that.
I’d never heard of Lauri Mylroie or Selig Harrison.
July 2, 2010 at 11:57 am
During the nineteenth century, Russia sought to expand its land empire south to the Indian Ocean, because it lacked a warm-water ocean port. This was the basis of the “Great Game” referred to in Kipling’s “Kim.”
Geopolitically the interests of Russia were no different in the 1980s than in the 1880s. Afghanistan and Persia had been objects of their attention for over a century. See Peter Hopkirk’s interesting series of books about the history of central Asia.
July 3, 2010 at 12:09 am
I’ve emphasized the continuity due to geography myself.