America’s Longest War — Was Longer
The war in Afghanistan is often described as America’s longest war, based on the U.S. invasion in October of 2001. That came in retaliation to the attack on The World Trade Center in September. But that doesn’t take into account American support of rebel forces twenty years before that in 1981 and memorialized in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War.
The irony is that at the time America was supporting the Mujahideen rebels who were trying to overthrow the Russian supported government. This time, America was supporting the government against the Taliban rebels. What makes it even more ironic is that the Taliban is an outgrowth of the original Mujahideen
There are a lot of twists and turns in that 40 year history of Afghanistan but then again there have been many twists and turns throughout Afghanistan’s long history. Let’s see if we can straighten them out a little.
Part one begins with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979. Russia created and supported what was called the Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The central government controlled Kabul but much of the country was controlled by rebel forces — the same situation faced today.
The driving force for American involvement was a little known Texas congressman named Charlie Wilson. The movie portrayed him as a congressional playboy and various sources have verified that. His nickname was “Good Time Charlie.” America became definitively involved in supporting the Mujahideen forces in 1983. In reality America started supporting the rebel forces probably in 1981 as Wilson himself hinted at in this interview.
It is noteworthy that in the interview Wilson refers to the Mujahideen forces as “freedom fighters.” And here is yet another twist of irony. In that interview, he says, “It’s too bad Americans aren’t privy to what’s going on there because the good guys are winning.” Interestingly one of his three trips to Afghanistan was for ‘missionary work.’ The playboy apparently had a religious streak.
One of the many lessons NOT learned from that encounter is that the Russian forces realized they could not rely on the government forces, just as America has learned it could not rely on them today. The turning point in that earlier war came in 1987 when the Mujahideen forces were supplied shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles by the United States.
Two years later in 1989, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. Historians say that humiliating defeat was one of the driving factors in the collapse of the Soviet empire two years later in 1991. That whole debacle is also believed to be the root from which militant, radical Islam grew, creating a breeding ground for terrorism and the rise of Osama Bin Laden.
Much of the coverage of the Afghan war focuses on these last twenty years and that is understandable. The process by which we kept walking step by step into the quagmire of Afghan is outlined below. But it would be a serious mistake to ignore those previous twenty years, for fear that we may repeat it all yet again in another twenty years.
“The Graveyard of Imperial Powers”
A Pakistani friend told me that is what people in the in the Muslim world call Afghanistan — the “Graveyard of Imperial Powers.” After all that has happened with American forces in Afghanistan, one might wonder if America has created a plot for itself in that graveyard.
