No Post-Soviet Chaos In Afghanistan

I'm reading "Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander The Great to the Fall of the Taliban" by Stephen Tanner.

In the late 1980s, the US and Soviet leadership met to try to create an organized transition to a post-Communist government in Afghanistan in which Najibullah would be left in power pending internationally supervised elections.

However, this did not come to pass and a civil war broke out between the Uzbeks and Tajiks and the forces of Hekmatyar, who had made a unilateral grab for Kabul and was physically tossed out. The new rulers of Kabul set up a new government (with Ahmed Shah Massoud as defense minister, among other things), but after some internal intrigue, the first president was ejected by Rabbani and this prompted Hekmatyar to start bombarding the city with rockets.

This kicked off a new civil war that ravaged the cities just as the Soviet war had ravaged the countryside.

So...

How can the war be avoided? Hekmatyar being allowed to take Kabul might satisfy him (and the Pashtuns--it was the northern dominance of Kabul that brought about the war), but he doesn't strike me as the sort who plays well with others. He was also the most unpleasant of the resistance whose minions threw acid in the faces of women who didn't veil themselves, so he might be hated by the capital's population.

There's also the obvious solution of Hekmatyar being killed during the war or the advance on Kabul, with the later the death the fewer the butterflies.
 
It is possible to avoid a protracted civil war but I think ten years of a superpower rampaging through Afghanistan make avoiding chaos more difficult than it would seem.
 
It is possible to avoid a protracted civil war but I think ten years of a superpower rampaging through Afghanistan make avoiding chaos more difficult than it would seem.
Besides, this is AFGHANISTAN we're talking about. It has never had a functional government that actually controlled all of its territory.
 
Besides, this is AFGHANISTAN we're talking about. It has never had a functional government that actually controlled all of its territory.

Yes, that is what makes the idea ASB. You had the likes of Bin Laden and Zarqawi running around along with dozens of militia groups trying to gain power.
 
How about having the US stay neutral in the Soviet war in Afghanistan or actually helping the Soviets root out Islamic fundamentalism? Come to think of it, the Americans are kinda kicking themselves for helping a group of militias that would eventually turn against them. Although the latter would result in a Soviet access to the Persian Gulf, it should be worth the risk than having the OTL problem of fundamentalism that is currently a problem in the MidEast?
 
How about having the US stay neutral in the Soviet war in Afghanistan or actually helping the Soviets root out Islamic fundamentalism? Come to think of it, the Americans are kinda kicking themselves for helping a group of militias that would eventually turn against them. Although the latter would result in a Soviet access to the Persian Gulf, it should be worth the risk than having the OTL problem of fundamentalism that is currently a problem in the MidEast?

Hindsight is 20/20. At this point in history our largest concern was the red tide that threatened to take over the world and ruin our way of life. We didn't care what kind of allies we made at this period so long as they helped us fight off communism. We installed many dictators just for this purpose. In fact, many problem areas are the result of US meddling back in the cold war.
 
Al Qaeda was not active in Afghanistan during this period. OBL was in Saudi Arabia and then Sudan.

Regardless in the nearly 8 years Islamist jihadists were there fighting with locals they radicalized alot of them, many who would later became the Taliban. That made post war peace very difficult. You saw the same thing in Iraq where Baathists fighting with Zarqawi were religiously radicalized by interacting with his group of jiahdists.
 
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Besides, this is AFGHANISTAN we're talking about. It has never had a functional government that actually controlled all of its territory.

This isn't true. The pre-Soviet governments were recognized authorities throughout all of Afghanistan. Yes, the regime had a relatively light footprint in rural areas, but it was still recognized as the ultimate governing authority. And the country was basically peaceful between the 1920s and the 1970s. (It even had a good road network that had been financed by the Soviets.)
 
This isn't true. The pre-Soviet governments were recognized authorities throughout all of Afghanistan. Yes, the regime had a relatively light footprint in rural areas, but it was still recognized as the ultimate governing authority.

light footprint =/= functionally in control. As long as the central government didn't interfere too much with the local warlords/clans/whatever, they were happy to give lip service to it.

My younger brother had a friend who had lived in Afghanistan in the '60s (his folks were posted there in some capacity). And while the place wasn't nearly as violent and out-of-control as today, nor as filled with religious crazies, it was not, shall we say, well governed.
 

Cook

Banned
Inviting Mohammed Zahir Shah to return would probably be a good start; after the chaos that followed, his reign was looked at as a golden age of peace.
 
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