Introduction

Abstract

Afghanistan is a land of extremes. For nearly fifty years of the twentieth century — from 1929 until 1978 — it was one of the most peaceful countries in Asia. It maintained its neutrality during the Second World War, avoided war with its neighbours, and was internally free of mass killings and mayhem. All this fell apart with a Marxist coup in 1978. From that point, it saw out the century in an ocean of blood. Afghanistan’s wars have come in three waves. First, from 1979 to 1989, following the USSR’s December 1979 invasion of the country, an embattled communist regime and its Soviet backers were battered by popular resistance groups, known as Mujahideen, some of whom received significant external support. The Soviet-Afghan war one of the seminal events of the late twentieth century, a struggle which cast into sharp relief the defects of the Soviet model of mono-organisational socialism, and contributed to the mood swing which ultimately led to the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself. But more than this, it confirmed Clausewitz’s depiction of war as a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means. Military force proved unable to provide a legitimate foundation for communist rule: no matter how impressive the military performance of elements of the Soviet armed forces, they were unable to deliver the political outcomes by which success was defined. Big Nations do indeed lose Small Wars (Mack, 1983).