The Effects Of The United States And The Soviet-Afghan War

The United States and the Soviet-Afghan War In December of 1970 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with a force of 30,000 troops in order to assist the communist government and setup a client state (“Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan”). This invasion marked the start of the Soviet-Afghan war, a long drawn out war due to the United States funding the Afghan freedom fighters who fought against the invading Soviet Union only to make the war longer and more expensive for them. The war would eventually end with a Soviet withdrawal and leave Afghanistan with a radical muslim group known as Al-Qaeda. This group known as Al-Qaeda would go on to be known as one of the largest terrorist organizations and commit terrorist attacks against the the very …show more content…
The United States and its allies funded the freedom fighters of the Soviet-Afghan war, known as the Mujahideen in order to lengthen the war and make it as detrimental to the Soviet Union as possible, doing so resulted a well funded and trained group known as Al-Qaeda to emerge. Prior to 1978, there was political unrest within Afghanistan, including a political switch that occurred after the coup in April of 1978 (Hammond). Afghanistan fell to a communist party after the coup and by …show more content…
The Maktab al-Khidamar was the group who funneled weapons, money and fighters from outside into the Afghan war, a key member of this group is the man known as Osama bin Laden he was trained by the C.I.A. and was an active member in the Soviet Afghan war ("Sleeping With the Devil...9/11."). In fact the whole group MAK for short, was nurtured by the C.I.A. ("Sleeping With the Devil...9/11."). Osama bin Laden and much of the MAK would go on to form what is known today as Al Qaeda, the group of radical muslims for which the 9/11 attacks are given credit to. The C.I.A. cooperated with these Jihadi groups for one simply reason, they all had one thing in common, they were against Moscow. Since the MAK received massive funding from the United States, and MAK turned into Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda essentially got its kickstart from the United States. After the Soviet Union withdrew, there wasn’t too much left for the United States, so Afghanistan was left a broken country with refugees, destroyed villages, towns and cities, and the government which was recently torn apart from the war had little influence left. This is where Al Qaeda really grew from, and eventually attacked the World Trade Center on September 11th,