Post on 07-Aug-2015
The South and the East - with Pakistan
The North - former Soviet republics and with
independent nations of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
and Tajikistan. West – Iran
There is also a short border with China in the mountainous.
(East)
Afghanistan became a unified entity in the mid-1700s, a poor and
underdeveloped country in a very rough neighborhood. Beginning in the 1830s, Afghanistan fought two
wars over the issue of Russia’s feeble attempts at gaining influence
and using Afghanistan against British India, which contained the territory of what is now modern
Pakistan. The Third Anglo-Afghan War was fought after World War I
for independence from British interference with Afghan affairs.
After victory in the third war, later celebrated as the
beginning of Afghan self-rule, Amanullah decided to
modernize his kingdom. He was the first Afghan ruler to
take aid and military assistance from the Soviet
Union. He announced reforms and predictably had to put
down a few revolts in the east over taxation, conscription,
and social changes, such as the education of women.
In May 1921, Afghanistan and the Russian Soviet Republic signed a Treaty of Friendship. The Soviets
provided Amanullah with aid in the form of cash, technology and military equipment. British influence in
Afghanistan waned. The Soviets desired to extract more from the
friendship treaty than Amanullah was willing to give. The United Kingdom
imposed minor sanctions and diplomatic slights as a response to the
treaty, fearing that Amanullah was slipping out of their sphere of influence.
The Saur Revolution
In 1978, as President Daoud’s regime approached its fifth year, he realized that the leftists had grown strong during his rule. He began to tack to the right, warming
to the United States while relations with Moscow cooled. A demonstration after the mysterious death of an Afghan leftist alarmed Daoud, who put the leading
members of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan under house arrest. The leaders of that
party called for a coup. A relatively small band of leftist army officers, with some logistical help from Soviet advisors, attacked the palace, killing Daoud and his family. The Saur Revolution, an urban coup d’état,
marked the birth of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
After the revolution, Taraki assumed the Presidency, Prime
Ministership and General Secretary of the PDPA. The
government had close relations with the Soviet Union.
On July 3, 1979, United States President Jimmy Carter signed
the first directive for covert financial aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.
In February 1979, U.S.-Afghan relations nosedived when radicals in Kabul
kidnapped U.S. Ambassador Adolph “Spike” Dubs. Against American advice,
Afghan-led, Soviet-advised rescue attempt ended up killing the kidnappers and the Ambassador. U.S. aid programs
ended and the diplomatic profile was reduced. Afghanistan’s conscripted army was unstable and not up to dealing with emerging mujahideen (holy warriors).
Tensions between Soviet advisors and Afghan commanders also grew. In March 1979, the insurgency took a
drastic turn. A rebel attack against the city of Heart resulted in the massacre of 50 Soviet officers and their dependents
The Afghan government requested Soviet troops to provide security and
to assist in the fight against the mujahideen rebels. However, the
Soviet government was in no hurry to grant them. Based on information
from the KGB, Soviet leaders felt that Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin's
actions had destabilized the situation in Afghanistan. Following his initial
coup against and killing of President Taraki, the KGB station in Kabul
warned Moscow that Amin's leadership would lead to "harsh repressions, and as a result, the
activation and consolidation of the opposition.
President Taraki visited Moscow in September 1979. He was told by the
Soviet leadership that he had to moderate his program and that the major obstacle to change was his
power hungry, radical prime minister, Hafizullah Amin. Taraki hatched a
plot, but Amin learned of it and countered with one of his own. Shortly after a photo of Taraki
embracing Brezhnev appeared on the front of Pravda, Taraki was killed by Amin’ henchmen. Amin then took the positions of defense secretary,
prime minister, president, and general secretary of the party.
The Soviets established a special commission on Afghanistan,
comprising KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, Boris Ponomarev from
the Central Committee and Dmitriy Ustinov, the Minister of Defence. In late April 1978, the committee reported that Amin was purging his opponents,
including Soviet loyalists, that his loyalty to Moscow was in
question and that he was seeking diplomatic links with Pakistan
and possibly the People's Republic of China
The Soviet Union decided to intervene on December 24, 1979, when the Red Army invaded its
southern neighbor. Over 100,000 Soviet troops took part in the
invasion, which was backed by another one hundred thousand
Afghan military men. In the meantime, Hafizullah Amin was killed and replaced by Babrak
Karmal.
The arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev on the scene in 1985 and his 'new
thinking' on foreign and domestic policy was probably the most
important factor in the Soviets' decision to leave.
Gorbachev was trying to ease cold war tensions by signing the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987 with the U.S. and
withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan whose presence had garnered so much international
condemnation.
In 1994 the most significant group in present-day Afghanistan emerges
unheralded. A mullah in Kandahar, Mohammad Omar Akhund (commonly known as Mullah Omar), forms a group
which he calls Taliban, meaning 'students' - in this
case students of the Qur'an. In the violence and chaos of
Afghanistan, the Taliban inevitably become a guerrilla
group;
In September, 1996, the Taliban with military support by Pakistan and
financial support by Saudi Arabia, captured Kabul and declared
themselves the legitimate government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan; they imposed a particularly puritanical form of
Islamic law in the two thirds of the country they controlled.
The Taliban repeatedly offered Massoud a
position of power to make him stop his resistance. Massoud (1953–2001- a
political and military leader in Afghanistan) declined
for he did not fight to obtain a position of power.
In early 2001 Massoud addressed the European Parliament in
Brussels asking the international community to provide
humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan.He stated that the
Taliban and Al Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong
perception of Islam" and that without the support of Pakistan the
Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for
up to a year.
On 9 September 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated by two Arab suicide attackers inside Afghanistan and
two days later about 3,000 people became victims of the September 11,
2001 attacks in the United States. Then US President George W. Bush accused
Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the faces behind the attacks. When the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden to US authorities
and to disband al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring
Freedom was launched in which teams of American and British special forces
worked against the Taliban.
U.S. air attacks began on October 7, 2001. Operation Enduring Freedom has
had two phases in its war in Afghanistan. The first—from October
2001 to March 2002—was an example of conventional fighting, and the second
of an evolved insurgency. Conventional - network-centric military
operation. It featured the Northern Alliance—a united front of Tajiks,
Hazarra, and Uzbeks—and anti-Taliban Pashtun forces fighting a war of
maneuver against the Taliban and its foreign-fighter supporters, many of
whom were trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. The U.S. contribution
came in the form of airpower and advice from Special Operations Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency paramilitary
personnel
The United Nations called a conference at Bonn, Germany.The United States and its
allies did not invite even the most moderate of the Taliban—and there were a few—to participate in the Bonn Process to establish a new government. No one
was in a mood to sit down with the discredited allies of al Qaeda, who had covered themselves with human rights
abuses and brought ruin own on themselves by supporting al Qaeda. As a result of the conference, Afghan leaders formed an interim government without Taliban participation. Hamid Karzai, a
Durrani Pashtun, was appointed president. The United Nations Security
Council has recognized the legitimacy of the government.
The Bonn Agreement of December 2001 defines the institutional reforms required to lay the foundation for stability, peace and prosperity in five distinct spheres,
namely counter narcotics; judicial reform; disarmament, demobilisation
and reintegration; training of the Afghan National Army; and training of police
forces. Japan is the lead country overseeing the demobilization,
disarmament and reintegration process. The United States is leading
international efforts to train the Afghan National Army. Germany has taken the
lead in training the Afghan National Police. Italy is the lead country for
judicial reform. The United Kingdom is leading international efforts to help
combat the production of and trade in narcotics.
At the meeting International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was created under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1386, 1413 and 1444 to
enable the Transitional Authority itself and the UN Assistance Mission in
Afghanistan to operate in the area of the capital, Kabul, and its surroundings with
reasonable security.
Initially, the core of the ISAF headquarters in Kabul was
formed from the Joint Command Centre in Heidelberg, Germany, which provided the first NATO
ISAF Force Commander. Together with its civilian support elements, the overall strength of ISAF amounts to approximately 8 000 personnel. A rotation plan
has been developed that provides for the longer-term
support of the ISAF’s mission headquarters at least until
February 2008
In January 2004, NATO appointed former Turkish Foreign Minister Hikmet Cetin as
its Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, with responsibility for
advancing political and military aspects of the Alliance’s engagement in
Afghanistan. The Senior Civilian Representative works under the guidance of the North Atlantic Council and in close co-ordination with the ISAF Commander
and the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, as well as with the Afghan
authorities and other international bodies present in the country.
On 8 December 2005, meeting at NATO Headquarters in Brussels,
the Allied Foreign Ministers endorsed a plan that paved the way for an expanded ISAF role and presence in Afghanistan.
The first element of this plan was the expansion of ISAF to the south in 2006. On 5 October
2006, ISAF implemented the final stage of its expansion, by taking on command of the international
military forces in eastern Afghanistan from the US-led
Coalition.
Providing support to the Afghan National Police (ANP) within
means and capabilities is one of
ISAF’s key supporting tasks. In this sphere, ISAF works in
coordination with and in support of the United States as well as
the European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan (EUPOL)
which was launched in June 2007.
The war in Afghanistan has also become the main effort in the U.S. war on terrorism. President Obama
in the first 18 months of his administration twice reinforced our Afghanistan contingent. Friendly
forces—U.S., allied, and Afghan—in the fall of 2010 included 384,000
military and police personnel, more than 10 times the estimated size of the full-time Taliban fighting force.In
his first 20 months in office, according to the New America Foundation, President Obama
nearly tripled the total Bush administration 2007–2008 drone strikes against terrorist targets in
Pakistan.
In 2010, by the end of September, the administration
had conducted 50 percent more strikes than it did in all of 2009.In a May 2010 state
visit to Washington, President Karzai also received a
promise from the Obama administration of a long-term strategic relationship that will
cement the U.S.-Afghan partnership beyond the sound
of the guns.
Popular support for the war has been much lower in Europe than
in the United States.While 49 nations are in the NATO-led coalition, burden- and risk-
sharing have remained problems. Only Afghanistan, Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, the
Netherlands, the United States, and a few other nations pursue
full-time offensive combat operations. Washington also
outstrips its allies in security- and foreign-assistance spending
The leaders of the NATO-member countries endorsed on May 21, 2012 an exit strategy for the War in Afghanistan
and declared their long-term commitment to Afghanistan. The NATO-led ISAF
Forces will hand over command of all combat missions to Afghan forces by the
middle of 2013, while shifting at the same time from combat to a support role
of advising, training and assisting the Afghan security forces and then
withdraw most of the 130,000 foreign troops by the end of December 2014. A
new and different NATO mission will then advise, train and assist the Afghan
security forces including the Afghan Special Operations Forces. The pace of
withdrawal will determined by each country individually, but coordinated with
coalition planners.
The transition process was completed and Afghan forces
assumed full security responsibility at the end of
2014, when the ISAF mission was completed. A new,
smaller non-combat mission (“RS - Resolute Support”) was launched on 1 January 2015
to provide further training, advice and assistance to the Afghan security forces and
institutions.
The US military bases in Kandahar and Jalalabad are
likely to remain open beyond the end of 2015, a senior US official said as
Washington considers slowing its pull-out from
Afghanistan.
19.03.2015
According to a Western official nations with troops in Afghanistan pledged roughly $1 billion to fund Afghan
security forces after 2014, while the majority of the funding will come from
the United States. This was conformed by a report of The Los Angeles Times which stated that according to British
Prime Minister David Cameron Australia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the
Netherlands, Estonia and others had made pledges that added "almost" $1
billion. However, these figures changed later as in June 2012 news media like The Globe and Mail, The Herald Sun, The Washington Post, and BBC News
Online published that at the NATO Chicago summit an annual aid of 4.1
billion U.S. dollars was pledged to pay for ongoing training, equipment and financial support for Afghanistan’s
security forces after 2014.