Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Soviet news agency TASS said Mohmand's main assignments are participating in experiments on the nauseating effects of weightlessness and photographic surveys of his native land. But the images broadcast to the folks back in Kabul suggested that Mohmand was given a larger mission: helping Moscow win friends in Afghanistan as the Soviets withdraw their troops from that divided country...
...cold war really over? No doubt the withdrawal from Afghanistan marks a change. It signifies the demise of the Brezhnev Doctrine, first enunciated with the invasion of Czechoslovakia exactly 20 years ago. Brezhnev declared that socialism will suffer no losses: countries that come under Marxist- Leninism remain under Marxist-Leninism. Afghanistan is the first breach in that doctrine. (Grenada is too small to count.) Enthusiastic believers in the demise of the cold war also point to Gorbachev's words to show that the Soviet Union, apostle of revolution ("national liberation"), has become the defender of stability. A favorite quote...
Similarly, the Soviets are not withdrawing from Afghanistan because they have suddenly come to believe in "not imposing convictions on anyone" and "letting everyone choose for himself." Does anyone doubt that if the Afghan resistance had been overcome, Gorbachev would still be in Afghanistan, communizing? Gorbachev is withdrawing because he lost the war. Writes Afghan Expert Zalmay Khalilzad in the National Interest: "1986 was the turning point in the Afghan war." What happened? "The most crucial change in this period was the provision of U.S. Stinger ((antiaircraft)) missiles to the mujahedin." To put it bluntly, the Soviets are not leaving...
...Doctrine became necessary because the Brezhnev Doctrine failed. The Brezhnev Doctrine failed because it met armed resistance. And that resistance drew strength and sustenance from the U.S., more precisely from the Reagan Doctrine, the American policy of supporting anti-Communist guerrillas in the newest outposts of the Soviet empire: Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua...
...arms to Afghan resistance fighters. Though many Pakistanis opposed aiding the rebels, Pentagon officials are convinced that General Baig and his senior military staff know where their interests lie. "The geopolitical realities remain even if Zia is gone," said a Defense Department official. "Pakistan cannot accept a Soviet-dominated Afghanistan on one border and India on the other." Those who consider Pakistan an ally can only hope that Zia's successor believes as fervently in those realities...