IB History Role of the USA USSR and Pakistan Notes

Great Power Roles: USA, USSR, and Pakistan in Afghanistan

Soviet objectives and occupation

1. The USSR intervened to preserve a friendly government on its southern border, with Soviet leaders fearing regime collapse, growing Islamist influence and damage to Soviet credibility. What was intended as a limited stabilising operation instead became a long war.
2. The Soviet 40th Army occupied major cities, military bases and transport routes, so that Soviet control was extensive in these areas but remained geographically uneven across the wider country.
3. Moscow installed Babrak Karmal after removing Amin, but Karmal lacked independent legitimacy and depended entirely on Soviet military support, a position that reinforced mujahideen claims that the Kabul government was simply a foreign creation.
4. Mohammad Najibullah replaced Karmal in 1986 and pursued a policy of National Reconciliation, combining continued military pressure with political offers to opponents. His government survived the Soviet withdrawal far longer than many observers had expected.

US, Saudi and Pakistani support for the resistance

1. The USA used Operation Cyclone to fund and arm the Afghan resistance, expanding this support under President Reagan as part of wider pressure on the USSR. Washington channelled most of this assistance through Pakistan rather than selecting individual commanders itself.
2. Saudi Arabia matched substantial US funding and actively promoted Sunni Islamist networks, and Arab volunteers and charities entered the conflict alongside official aid. This foreign religious finance strengthened transnational militant connections that would outlast the war itself.
3. Pakistan hosted refugees, training camps and the Peshawar-based mujahideen parties, and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate distributed much of the foreign aid, favouring Islamist groups it expected to serve its own regional interests. This policy increased Islamabad's leverage over the resistance but deepened Afghan factionalism in the process.
4. Pakistani leaders sought strategic depth: a friendly Afghan government that would also reduce Indian influence in the region.

China, diplomacy and the road to withdrawal

1. China supplied weapons to the mujahideen through Pakistan, opposing Soviet expansion and cooperating tactically with the USA. Afghanistan thereby became another arena in the wider Sino-Soviet rivalry.
2. Afghanistan, Pakistan, the USA and the USSR concluded the Geneva Accords in 1988, establishing a timetable for Soviet withdrawal but excluding the mujahideen from the settlement itself, so that Afghan government forces remained responsible for most of the continuing local fighting. Foreign withdrawal was therefore separated entirely from any Afghan political compromise.