Afghan mujahideen

• 1. Introduction

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  The Afghan mujahideen were Islamist militant groups whose story stretches from the bazaars of Peshawar to the rubble of Kabul, from a 1979 Soviet invasion to the collapse of a government they themselves built. When the Soviet Union crossed into Afghanistan in December 1979, it triggered one of the Cold War's most complex armed mobilizations. What followed was not a single resistance but dozens of competing factions, united by anti-communism and Islam, fractured by ethnicity, ideology, and personal ambition. Who funded them? How did a loose coalition of mountain guerrillas outlast a superpower? And what did victory actually deliver when it finally arrived?

• 2. Before the Invasion

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  Jamiat-e Islami had existed since 1972 and Hezb-e Islami since 1976, years before the Soviets ever crossed the border. These organizations were already functioning as militias and paramilitary groups, and they took part in the 1975 uprisings in the Panjshir Valley and in Laghman Province. By the fall of 1978, resistance groups had formed in parts of eastern Afghanistan. Then, as early as the 2nd of February 1979, reports surfaced that Afghan dissidents were receiving guerrilla training across the border in Pakistan.

  The Herat mutiny in March 1979 was a turning point. Mutineers from the 17th Division, joined by civilians, briefly overthrew the city garrison. The subsequent air bombardment made clear that something more serious than scattered unrest was building.

  Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, a leader of Islamic mysticism and a hazrat, was among the first to organize. He created the Afghan National Liberation Front and on the 25th of May 1979, appealed for international support in New York City. Sayyed Ahmad Gailani, a spiritual figure known as a pir, founded the National Islamic Front around the same time. Mawlawi Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi, a religious scholar and former member of parliament, formed the Revolutionary Islamic Movement; he was already well known for physically assaulting the prominent leftist Babrak Karmal inside the House of Representatives in 1966.

  By August 1979, Hazara tribes alone had organized some 5,000 fighters. On the 11th of August 1979, four groups including the Afghan National Liberation Front, Jamiat-i Islami, Hezb-i Islami Khalis, and the Revolutionary Islamic Movement formed a new organization based in Peshawar, aiming to establish an Islamic Republic. The coalition of the resistance was, in a meaningful sense, already in motion before the first Soviet tank crossed the Amu Darya.

• 3. The Peshawar Seven

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  Pakistan recognized seven major mujahideen groups, all based in Peshawar, and these became the official face of the Afghan resistance to the outside world. The coalition was divided between what analysts called fundamentalist and traditionalist factions; the fundamentalist factions were generally militarily stronger.

  Among the Political Islamists, Jamiat-i Islami was led by Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former professor of theology at Kabul University, and drew its base largely from Tajik Afghans. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-i Islami was described as radical and oppositionist, and it received the largest share of funding from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, Saudi intelligence, and the American CIA. His faction was strongest in Ghilzai Pashtun tribal regions in the south-east and aimed for a state modeled on Khomeini's Iran. Mohammad Yunus Khalis led a splinter faction called Hezb-i Islami Khalis and was noted for favoring cooperation with other groups. Abdul Rasul Sayyaf led Ittihad-i Islami, which advocated Wahhabism and was funded directly by Saudi Arabia; smaller than the others, it was influential in drawing international volunteers into the jihad.

  On the traditionalist side, Harakat-i Inqilab-i Islami under Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi drew support among Pashtun tribes in the south. Mojaddedi's Jabha-i Nejat-i Milli was described as the weakest group militarily, though its leader commanded considerable personal respect. Sayid Ahmad Gailani's Mahaz-i Milli was the most secular and pro-Western of the seven, rejecting both communism and Islamic fundamentalism and supporting a return of the monarchy.

  Beyond these seven parties, notable field commanders shaped the actual fighting. Ahmad Shah Massoud operated under Jamiat-i Islami; Jalaluddin Haqqani served under Hizb-i Islami Khalis. The Hezb-i Islami Gulbuddin faction, despite its political visibility, attracted the most criticism for initiating clashes with fellow mujahideen.

• 4. Fractures Within

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  Dutch journalist Jere Van Dyk, reporting from Afghanistan in 1981, put the internal situation plainly: the guerrillas were effectively fighting two civil wars at once, one against the Soviets and the Afghan regime, and another among themselves. Hekmatyar's Hizb-i Islami was most often cited as the initiator of cross-faction clashes.

  The question of the exiled king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, ran like a fault line through the coalition. Zahir Shah was popular among Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Hekmatyar and Khalis opposed any role for him outright. Gailani, Mojaddedi, and Mohammadi supported bringing him into an interim coalition. Rabbani and Sayyaf were initially against it, then reversed their positions.

  At least three different attempts to build an organization called the "Islamic Unity of Afghan Mujahedin" were tried, and none lasted. The formation of an Afghanistan Interim Government in 1988 also failed to build real unity; it excluded Shia groups backed by Iran and pro-Chinese leftist groups, representing only the Peshawar Seven.

  In 1984, Ahmad Shah Massoud created the Shura-e Nazar as an offshoot of Jamiat, combining military command with functioning institutions in health and education across northern and north-eastern Afghanistan. It was a rare attempt to build something resembling governance in the areas the resistance controlled.

  Mujahideen leader Mohammad Yunus Khalis attributed the persistent disunity to a fundamental lack of trust among the various leaders. Some commanders went further: certain mujahideen factions targeted schools and teachers, justifying the attacks on the grounds that the PDPA's leftist ideology was being taught to students. The 1992 power-sharing agreement called the Peshawar Accord would ultimately exclude Hekmatyar's faction entirely.

• 5. Weapons and Funding

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  Most of the mujahideen's weapons were of Soviet design, either supplied by foreign backers or captured from Soviet and Afghan military units. In 1981 it was disclosed that recoilless rifles, including Chinese 83mm, Blo, and 70mm variants, were in use. Soviet 82mm mortars, British mortars, and Chinese Type 63 mortars were also part of the arsenal, alongside Lee-Enfield rifles, Egyptian-made AKMs, and Chinese-made SKS carbines.

  Beginning in 1985, heavier equipment including bazookas and heavy machine guns began to arrive, along with cold-weather gear like snow boots and ski tents. By 1987, raised funding from the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia had substantially strengthened the movement overall.

  The portable Stinger surface-to-air missile was first used by mujahideen in September 1986. Some military analysts called it a "game changer" and coined the phrase "Stinger effect" to describe its impact on Soviet air operations. A Russian general, however, claimed the United States had greatly exaggerated Soviet and Afghan aircraft losses, and analysts noted that the statistics came largely from mujahideen self-reporting of unknown reliability.

  The CIA's Operation Cyclone was described internally as its "largest and most successful covert operation ever." Britain's support to the Afghan resistance became Whitehall's most extensive covert operation since the Second World War; Ahmad Shah Massoud's group specifically was supported by MI6 and trained and supplied by the SAS. Pakistan controlled which rebels received assistance, and the four fundamentalist factions received the largest share of the funding. A substantial additional flow came from private donors and charities in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

• 6. International Fighters and Consequences

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  Thousands of volunteers from Muslim countries came to Afghanistan to join the resistance, with the majority drawn from the Arab world. These men later became known as Afghan Arabs. The most well-known Arab financier and militant among them was Osama bin Laden, who would later found al-Qaeda and mastermind the September 11 attacks on the United States.

  Other international fighters from the Indian subcontinent went on to become involved in terrorist activities in Kashmir and against the states of Bangladesh and Myanmar during the 1990s. The recruitment infrastructure built under Abdul Rasul Sayyaf's Ittihad-i Islami, funded by Saudi Arabia, had been especially influential in drawing foreign volunteers into the conflict.

  After Hekmatyar and Sayyaf publicly denounced the United States and the Saudi royal family over their role in the 1991 Gulf War, Washington and Riyadh indicated they would cut funding to both commanders. This threat did not materialize. In 1993, it was reported that some mujahideen fighters were deployed in the Caucasus to fight Armenian forces in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Mujahideen had also reportedly been involved in the Tajik civil war during 1992-1993. In 1991, some factions were deployed in Kuwait to fight Iraq.

  The Taliban, formed in 1994 from religious students recruited from madrasas in Pakistan, drew nearly all of its original leadership from veterans of either the Hezb-i Islami Khalis or Harakat-i Inqilab-e Islami factions. The network of fighters, training, and ideological infrastructure built during the Soviet-Afghan War did not simply disperse when the war ended.

• 7. The Soviet Withdrawal

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  On the 14th of April 1988, the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan signed the Geneva Accords, with the United States and Soviet Union as guarantors. The agreement committed the Soviet Union to withdraw all its troops by the 15th of February 1989. The first half of Soviet forces left between the 15th of May and the 16th of August 1988; the second half departed after the 15th of November 1988. Boris Gromov, commander of the 40th Army, was the last Soviet soldier to cross out of Afghanistan.

  The mujahideen themselves had paid an enormous price. Preliminary estimates put their dead at 90,000 fighters over the course of the war against the USSR.

  The Soviet withdrawal did not end the fighting. Soviet military advisors remained in Afghanistan, coordinating airstrikes, and Soviet volunteers operated Scud missiles that gave the Kabul government a firepower advantage. As late as December 1991, Soviet pilots were recorded flying bombing missions against the mujahideen. The Afghan Air Force, maintained with Soviet support, proved crucial in keeping Mohammad Najibullah's government alive.

  Massoud staged spring offensives in both 1990 and 1991, capturing cities and expanding his territory. In March 1991, mujahideen forces took Khost, ending an eleven-year siege. By early 1991, the Afghan government controlled only ten percent of the country. After the August 1991 coup attempt by Soviet hardliners dried up aid to Kabul, the Air Force could no longer fly due to fuel shortages and army desertion rates surged. In March 1992, Dostum's militiamen defected to Massoud after negotiations, and Najibullah's government collapsed shortly after.

  The mujahideen captured Kabul on the 28th of April 1992 and declared it "Victory Day," but Hekmatyar's Hizb-i Islami Gulbuddin refused to sign the Peshawar Accord, ensuring that the civil war simply changed character rather than ending.