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Toward a Post-Soviet Afghanistan
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14894 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1988 |
2,937 Words |
| Author
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Elie D. Krakowski
Elie D. Krakowski is special assistant to the assistant
secretary of defense. |
United States policy on the Soviet-Afghan war, at the time of the April 1988 Geneva Accords, was explicitly linked to three fundamental assumptions. The first was a belief that Moscow has become over the last two years firmly committed to a total and irreversible withdrawal from Afghanistan. The second was that such a withdrawal would quickly be accompanied (even before its completion) by a collapse of the communist regime in Kabul. Finally, it was assumed, this collapse would lead to the assumption of power by the legitimate representatives of the vast majority of Afghans--the Afghan resistance.
U.S. statements on this last subject, however, have not gone beyond generalizations implying a return to some sort of status quo ante. But would Afghanistan, after all it had gone through since 1978, simply go back to a preinvasion, precommunist coup type of situation, or had some things been irreversibly altered? Would it, with its common enemy vanished, become enmeshed in a bitter civil war as some have speculated in the press? Would it come dominated by Khomeini-type Afghan fundamentalists?
Since the signing of the Geneva Accords, the situation has not gone exactly as expected. The communist regime has not yet crumbled. The Afghan resistance has not taken any major city, and there have even been reports about the reintroduction of Soviet troops (in July, for example), suggesting Moscow may not intend a total withdrawal after all. The issue of a post-Soviet Afghanistan's character and orientation, perhaps not surprisingly, appears to have lost some of its previous immediacy. It is precisely now that such a question takes on additional meaning, for it can help clarify and solidify the objectives of policy; it can help delineate more sharply the distinction between wishful thinking and the realm of the possible.
To the extent that there is any nation in the U.S. media about what a post-Soviet Afghanistan might look like, the few images drawn alternate between two of the options mentioned above: a savage civil war or a Khomeini-like fundamentalist regime. Either is highly unlikely. Both views are born out of ignorance, or are the result of successful Soviet disinformation (itself dependent upon lack of facts). Moscow has, for some time now, been portraying the resistance as basically Khomeini-like fanatics. If this view gains wide acceptance, the alternatives in Afghanistan can then more easily be depicted as a choice between Moscow's brand of "progressives" or Muslim fanatics.
The character of a post-Soviet
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