Mujaheddin Memories

It’s hard to be an ally of the United States,” a Pakistani general is reputed to have said. “You never know when they might turn around and stab themselves in the back.” This darkly humorous insight certainly applies to the U.S. effort against the USSR in Afghanistan, and the mishandling of its aftermath. Journalist Steve Coll’s account of how the Afghan war, one of the most successful operations of the entire Cold War, was allowed to degenerate into the anarchy that helped create 9/11 is reliable, riveting, and frightening.

The proxy war that the Free World waged against the Soviets in Afghanistan was undeniably effective. At the cost of a few billion dollars in aid to the Afghan resistance, we bled the USSR of perhaps $100 billion. More important, the Soviets’ failed Afghan invasion cost them their claim to be the leader of the oppressed masses of the Third World; it also angered the Arab world, spoiled the Moscow Olympics, and gave Solidarity in Poland a gasp of air. Eventually, the Red Army’s forced withdrawal from Afghanistan ended the myth that history had a direction, toward the ever wider spread of Communism. It was a very thick nail indeed in the coffin of the Evil Empire.

RS

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Radek Sikorski

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It’s hard to be an ally of the United States,” a Pakistani general is reputed to have said. “You never know when they might turn around and stab themselves in the back.” This darkly humorous insight certainly applies to the U.S. effort against the USSR in Afghanistan, and the mishandling of its aftermath. Journalist Steve Coll’s account of how the Afghan war, one of the most successful operations of the entire Cold War, was allowed to degenerate into the anarchy that helped create 9/11 is reliable, riveting, and frightening.

The proxy war that the Free World waged against the Soviets in Afghanistan was undeniably effective. At the cost of a few billion dollars in aid to the Afghan resistance, we bled the USSR of perhaps $100 billion. More important, the Soviets’ failed Afghan invasion cost them their claim to be the leader of the oppressed masses of the Third World; it also angered the Arab world, spoiled the Moscow Olympics, and gave Solidarity in Poland a gasp of air. Eventually, the Red Army’s forced withdrawal from Afghanistan ended the myth that history had a direction, toward the ever wider spread of Communism. It was a very thick nail indeed in the coffin of the Evil Empire.