Afghan conflict
The Afghan conflict is the series of events that have kept Afghanistan in a near-continuous state of armed conflict since the 1970s. Early instability followed the collapse of the Kingdom of Afghanistan in the largely non-violent 1973 coup d'état, which deposed Afghan monarch Mohammad Zahir Shah, ending his 40-year-long reign. With the concurrent establishment of the Republic of Afghanistan, headed by Mohammad Daoud Khan, the country's relatively peaceful and stable period in modern history came to an end. However, all-out fighting did not erupt until after 1978, when the Saur Revolution violently overthrew Khan's government and established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Subsequent unrest over the radical reforms that were being pushed by the then-ruling People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan led to unprecedented violence, prompting a large-scale pro-PDPA military intervention by the Soviet Union in 1979. In the ensuing Soviet–Afghan War, the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen received extensive support from Pakistan, the United States, and Saudi Arabia in a joint covert effort that was dubbed Operation Cyclone.
Although the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the various mujahideen factions continued to fight against the PDPA government, which collapsed in the face of the Peshawar Accord in 1992. However, the Peshawar Accord failed to remain intact in light of the mujahideen's representatives' inability to reach an agreement on a power-sharing coalition for the new government, triggering a multi-sided civil war between them. By 1996, the Taliban, supported by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, had seized the capital city of Kabul in addition to approximately 90% of the country, while northern Afghanistan remained under the authority of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. During this time, the Northern Alliance's Islamic State of Afghanistan enjoyed widespread international recognition and was represented at the United Nations, as opposed to the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which only received diplomatic recognition from three nations. Despite the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, the Northern Alliance continued to resist in another civil war for the next five years.
After the September 11 attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001, the Taliban granted Saudi-born jihadist Osama bin Laden political asylum in the Islamic Emirate's territory. The group's subsequent non-compliance with the demand by the Bush administration to extradite him prompted the American-led invasion of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, which bolstered the Northern Alliance by toppling the Islamic Emirate and installing the Afghan Transitional Authority in 2002. The invasion triggered the 20-year-long War in Afghanistan, in which NATO and NATO-allied countries fought alongside the nascent Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to combat the Taliban insurgency. During the Battle of Tora Bora, the American-led military coalition failed to capture bin Laden, who subsequently relocated to Pakistan and remained there until he was killed by U.S. SEAL Team Six in Abbottabad in 2011. Nonetheless, the fighting in Afghanistan continued, eventually leading to the 2020–2021 American withdrawal and ultimately ending with the 2021 Taliban offensive, which led to the re-establishment of the present-day Islamic Emirate. Though the country-wide war ended in 2021, clashes and unrest currently persist in some parts of Afghanistan due to the ISIS–Taliban conflict and the anti-Taliban Republican insurgency., the collapsed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan remains the internationally recognized government of the country.
List of major events
Cold War era
- 1973 Afghan coup d'état: Overthrow of King Mohammad Zahir Shah of Afghanistan.
- 1975 Panjshir Valley uprising: Iranian–Pakistani backed Islamist uprising in Afghanistan.
- Afghan coup d'état attempt : Failed Afghan coup attempt.
- Saur Revolution : Overthrow of the Republic of Afghanistan and President Mohammad Daoud Khan by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, a socialist state aligned with the Soviet Union.
- 1979 uprisings in Afghanistan: Anti-government unrest before the Soviet–Afghan War
- Soviet–Afghan War : Military intervention by the Soviet Armed Forces in support of the PDPA against large-scale rebellions. Fighting primarily occurred between the Soviet–Afghan alliance and the Afghan mujahideen, who were backed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, and Iran, among others. Ended with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989.
- Afghan Civil War : Continuation of the conflict between the Afghan government and the Afghan mujahideen but without the involvement of Soviet forces. The Soviet Union continued to financially support the Afghan government in its fight and, likewise, mujahideen factions continued to receive support from the United States and Pakistan. The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan survived until the Battle of Kabul, during which the mujahideen established the Islamic State of Afghanistan.
- Afghan Civil War : Began when various mujahideen groups withdrew support from and began fighting against the ISA, including Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin, later largely replaced by the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Hezb-e Wahdat, and Junbish-i Milli Islami. Mujahideen loyal to the Islamic State of Afghanistan received support from Saudi Arabia. Ended with the Taliban seizing control of Kabul and most of the country in 1996, establishing the first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
- Afghan Civil War : Continuation of the previous phase of the war between militias loyal to either the ISA or the Taliban-ruled IEA. ISA loyalists reorganized into the Northern Alliance, including Hezb-e Wahdat and Junbish-i Milli Islami, who previously opposed the ISA. During the war, al-Qaeda stepped up its terrorist attacks against the United States, culminating in the September 11 attacks, after which the IEA lost almost all international support and diplomatic recognition from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Post-9/11 era
- War in Afghanistan : Began with the United States' invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001. Overthrow of the Taliban and eventual establishment of the internationally recognized Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The war turned into a protracted Taliban insurgency, with Afghan government and NATO-led coalition troops fighting the reorganized Taliban and sporadically other Islamist militant groups such as al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin, and the Islamic State – Khorasan Province. Bilateral negotiations between the Taliban and the United States led to an agreement whereby American and NATO troops withdrew amidst the 2021 Taliban offensive, in which the Islamic Republic fell, and the Taliban established the second Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
- Islamic State–Taliban conflict : Began in 2015, during the post-9/11 war, as Taliban dissident groups organized into the local branch of the Islamic State. The group attacked the Taliban as well as NATO troops, but primarily targeted civilians. The insurgency is ongoing.
- Republican insurgency in Afghanistan : Began in 2021 when the remaining forces loyal to the fallen Islamic Republic reorganized into the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan in the Panjshir Valley. Despite having international recognition as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the National Resistance Front has received no foreign support. Taliban forces captured the Panjshir Valley in September 2021, and leaders of the National Resistance Front fled to Tajikistan. Fighting is ongoing between the newly organized military of the Taliban and the small, scattered holdouts of the National Resistance Front in Panjshir Province and Baghlan Province.
Prelude
Kingdom of Afghanistan
From 1933 to 1973, the Kingdom of Afghanistan experienced a lengthy period of peace and relative stability. It was ruled as a monarchy by King Zahir Shah, who belonged to the Afghan Musahiban Barakzai dynasty. In the 1960s, Afghanistan as a constitutional monarchy held limited parliamentary elections.Republic of Afghanistan
by his cousin Mohammad Daoud Khan in July 1973, after discontent with the monarchy grew in the urban areas of Afghanistan. The country had experienced several droughts, and charges of corruption and poor economic policies were leveled against the ruling dynasty. Khan abolished the monarchy and declared the Republic of Afghanistan, and he became the first president of Afghanistan. He was supported by a faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, Afghanistan's communist party, which was founded in 1965 and enjoyed a strong relationship with the Soviet Union. In The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan: Mass Mobilization, Civil War, and the Future of the Region, Neamatollah Nojumi writes: "The establishment of the Republic of Afghanistan increased the Soviet investment in Afghanistan and the PDPA influence in the government's military and civil bodies."In 1976, alarmed by the growing power of the PDPA and the party's strong affiliation with the Soviet Union, Khan tried to scale back the PDPA's influence. He dismissed PDPA members from their government posts, appointed conservative elements instead and finally announced the dissolution of the PDPA, arresting senior party members.