Critical Triangle continues.....

In parallel, things were not going well in Afghanistan, but were about to change. The failed August coup in 1991 in Moscow, set in motion the dissolution of the USSR and by September 1991, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze stopped aid to the Najibullah government. By 1992 April, the Najibullah government had collapsed, and the mujahideen walked into Kabul 12 days later. However, their deep differences had not yet been resolved.

Fighting immediately broke out between the Tajik factions led by Ahmad Shah Masood and Burhanuddin Rabbani and the Pashtun factions of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Within months Hekmatyar was rocketing Kabul, which sustained more damage than it had anytime during the preceding 13 years.

By the time Bush demitted office Pakistan had lost not just its strategic importance to the US but had also become a nuclear troublemaker and a source of instability. These fears would manifest themselves during the following Clinton presidency. Denying the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York for example, an Egyptian radical group sent the fax from Peshawar. Pakistan’s complaints that freedom fighters from the last 14 years had suddenly been labelled terrorists did not fly.

Despite minor blips, the downward slide simply continued, with each of the tendencies described above simply getting aggravated.

The political instability in Pakistan also ensured that the ISI retained firm control over Afghan policy and by 1995 they saw their window of opportunity in the Taliban—initially a group of students who had resisted mujahideen excesses, but were soon welded into a formidable fighting force with considerable support from both the Pakistan army and the ISI. While initially viewing the stability they brought Afghanistan as a good thing, US support eroded rapidly given the Taliban’s predilection for human rights violations and the mistreatment of women

To be continued...