WI Afghan civil war ends in communist victory

So Wi the the afghan war in the 70s ends with communist victory. In otl the soviets introduced land reforms, and gave education to woman. WI the counist government managed to retain power and break the mullah power. How would a communist not Islamic fundamentalist Afghanistan effect the world.
 
Without Afghanistan the USSR would probably have stayed together for a few years longer than in OTL.

A lot of the outcome would have to based on what the USSR did next. If the USSR really wanted to present a view as a force of good compared to the evil capitalists of the USA then Afghanistan would have to become an example of what good the USSR can do for the world. This, Vietnam and Korea are three of the most reported upon wars in the cold war. Any side that wins has to be seen as the good guys for whoever is pulling their strings.

This would mean...

1. A complete overhaul of infrastructure. Afghanistan post war Communism needs to be seen as the better outcome.

2. An education system the teaches everyone or at least he entire male population with a much longer period of education in their lives.

3. Life expectancy will go up.

4. Health service will be installed.

5. A very extreme police force will be set up to remove anyone that could threaten stability of the communist government. This means everyone from tribal elders, religious figures and criminals will be removed or killed.

6. Post USSR. When it falls apart the Afghan nation will probably attempt to survive for a dozen years but the main problem is that without the backing of the USSR the government in charge will probably fall apart. The health system/education/police will all break up, but after a year will probably be set up again as the infrastructure and the administration is all still in place.

7. The damage done to the traditional powers of Afghanistan will be almost impossible to repair as the first generation of people brought up with better things than what their fathers and grand fathers used to have will have reached adult age.

8. Possible civil war between the old and the new. It won't be a war of communism vs democracy but tradition vs a new culture. Whatever happens Afghanistan will probably end up a lot more similar of that of either Iran or Pakistan.

9. As long as no one else gets involved its reasonable to assume that Afghanistan will probably become a a stable region. That being that there is now no one else left who will seek to fight or oppress them. Barring anything serious Afghanistan could become economical power. While it's not a resource abundant nation it is still placed in a good geographical position for a trading nation.
 
Communism will be hard to instill in the populace, and would require methods unacceptable for Gorby to maintain. However, he would face party pressures to prop up the new client state to keep Iran in check and respond to an even more outwardly hostile Reagan.
 
Socialist Afghanistan

It's the classic good-news, bad-news scenario.
I think the Afghanistani people might have been better off materially without the march of agony after Soviet withdrawal/fall of Najibullah's regime.
In my half-informed opinion, the US backed some true bastards.
Gamalbuddin Hekmatyar and Mohammed Dostum should be on the same cell block in the Hague as Milosevic and Tjudman and the folks behind the Rwandan massacres in the aftermath of the fall of Najibullah.
Not letting those two and their buddies run amok for five years before the Taliban came to power would've saved and improved millions of lives.

Education, health care, and infrastructure wouldn't have imploded as badly as they did once funding dried up with Soviet withdrawal in 1989. However, whomever "won" was not interested in rebuilding the country afterward. The Soviets were in no shape to push to the Arabian Sea.
AFAIK, their goals ranged from squashing Muslim fundamentalists inciting
restive Muslim minorities in Central Asian SSRs to any number of economic goals that failed miserably IOTL.
One thought is that Iran and India would really like to have a gas pipeline and the money from having that go through Afghanistan might have helped Afghanistan rebuild after the carnage. It could just have lined the pockets of the Najibullah regime. Who knows? Hamid Karzai was working on that project with Chevron before he became the local enabler of NATO involvement in Afghanistan.
Too many players did not want a socialist, secular state on their border, Iran and Pakistan especially, regardless of US support/funding. Their secret services would make a brisk trade in relaying opium for guns to fund their pet irredentist groups/coreligionists that would make life miserable for the Afghan regime.
You could have another Myanmar with lots of well-armed, restive minority militias that control the countryside while the ruling oligarchy takes their cut from various scams within their borders and squashes anything that looks like a promising coalition to remove them from power or a Somalia where central authority has collapsed and devolved to a collection of tribal governments with that level of interference in Afghan politics.
Either way, too much money and attention goes to security and not enough to internal development in those scenarios.
 
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