On February 2, 1983, Ronald Reagan welcomed the Afghan mujahideen to the Oval Office. The mujahideen — literally “those who wage jihad” — were seeking support against the Soviets, who had invaded Afghanistan four years earlier. The enemy of our enemy was our friend, and the United States continued to support the Afghan “freedom fighters” throughout the end of the war, at which point the Soviet Union collapsed.
The Afghan mujahideen comprised various guerilla groups based in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as international fighters, largely from Arabia, including Osama bin Laden. After the war, most mujahideen fighters continued their struggle — with American funding — against the new Soviet-backed regime under Mohammad Najibullah, whom they finally defeated by capturing Kabul on April 28, 1992. Predictably, the bellicose mujahid groups failed to peaceably share power, plunging the country into four more years of civil war between half a dozen rival factions. Some fighters, apparently disenchanted with that war’s dearth of belligerents, formed a new militia, the Taliban, founded almost entirely by men who had fought with the American-backed forces against the Soviets. The new group quickly came to dominate the other militias in large part through the support of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), an important American ally through which the United States had funded the original mujahideen struggle against our communist enemies.
.png)
.png)
