Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim largely explores the Soviet-Afghan war from the American perspective. It is therefore worth considering the Soviet Union’s own motivations for invading Afghanistan, motivations which mirror many of the US’s motivations. For the Soviet Union, the war was deeply rooted in geopolitical calculations, concerns over regional stability, and a commitment to preserving influence in a strategically important neighbor. What began as a limited intervention evolved into a drawn-out, brutal conflict that severely strained the Soviet military, economy, and international reputation. The war’s outcome contributed significantly to the unraveling of the Soviet system and marked a turning point in late 20th-century global politics.

From the Soviet point of view, the decision to intervene in Afghanistan was driven by a complex mix of ideological, strategic, and security considerations. In April 1978, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), a Marxist-Leninist party aligned with the USSR, seized power in a coup known as the Saur Revolution. The new government, under Nur Muhammad Taraki and later Hafizullah Amin, implemented radical reforms inspired by socialist principles. These reforms were deeply unpopular with much of Afghan society, especially in the rural and religious populations. Resistance began to mount, and the country quickly descended into chaos. Moscow feared that the instability could undermine the credibility of socialism in the region and open the door to Western, particularly American, influence, possibly leading to instability across the southern Soviet republics, many of which had significant Muslim populations.

Initially, Soviet leadership under Leonid Brezhnev was reluctant to send troops. But by late 1979, the situation had deteriorated sharply. The assassination of Taraki and the rise of Hafizullah Amin, whom Soviet officials distrusted, led to growing concerns about the PDPA’s viability and loyalty. On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union launched Operation Storm-333, deploying troops to Kabul, assassinating Amin, and installing Babrak Karmal, a rival PDPA leader who was more closely aligned with Moscow. The Soviets hoped that their intervention would be brief: stabilize the government, restore order, and leave the Afghan army to maintain control. However, they severely underestimated the strength of Afghan resistance and the fractured, tribal nature of the country.

From 1980 onwards, the Soviet Union found itself mired in a prolonged guerrilla war against the mujahideen, a diverse array of Islamist and tribal militias backed by Pakistan, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and others. The Soviet military, though technologically superior and well-trained, struggled to adapt to the rugged terrain, hit-and-run tactics, and decentralized nature of the enemy. The Soviet approach involved securing urban centers and transportation routes while launching airstrikes and search-and-destroy missions into rural areas. This strategy failed to suppress the mujahideen, who used their knowledge of the mountains and their access to foreign arms—especially US-supplied Stinger missiles—to great effect, inflicting significant losses on Soviet forces.

The war was deeply unpopular among Soviet citizens. Like the US War in Vietnam, the Afghan war lacked a compelling ideological justification. The Soviet public was often kept in the dark about the true nature of the conflict, but as casualties mounted—official estimates suggest 15,000 Soviet troops died, with tens of thousands more wounded—disillusionment grew. The war also placed enormous financial strain on the Soviet economy, already burdened by stagnation and the pressures of maintaining global commitments. It drained resources that could have been used for domestic reforms, eroded morale within the military, and created a rift within the Communist Party over the direction of foreign policy.

Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, initiated the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Seeking to reform and modernize the USSR through his policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), Gorbachev recognized that a continued presence in Afghanistan was unsustainable and counterproductive. The withdrawal, completed in February 1989, was widely interpreted both at home and abroad as a humiliating defeat. The Soviet Union left behind a fragile Afghan government that would collapse within three years, paving the way for further civil war and eventually the rise of the Taliban. For the Soviet leadership, the war’s aftermath was sobering. It exposed the limitations of Soviet power, highlighted the failure of military force to impose political order, and demonstrated the dangers of ideological overreach. The war discredited interventionist foreign policy and contributed to a broader reassessment of Soviet global strategy. The war became a symbol of the dysfunction of the late Soviet state.