Who would you support in the Soviet-Afghan War?

[Famous Mortimer]

I would have probably supported the rebels at the time because pretty much everyone who wasn't a Soviet hack did. Even countries like Cuba, while they officially offered tepid support, were extremely conflicted about the whole thing. The Soviet invasion was even what led to the Italian Communist Party and other Eurocommunists to officially break with Moscow. Not only were all establishment parties, centre-right and centre-left, supportive of the rebels, so was the New Left and even big chunks of the Old Left. Outside of the Soviet bloc itself, the PCF central committee were probably the only people who backed the Russians.

So I really doubt anyone, including all the people saying otherwise, would have taken what was seen as such an extreme view at the time, so against what absolutely everyone else in the political arena was saying.

In retrospect of course, the Soviets were totally right.

[Famous Mortimer]

I don't think wars are like football matches.

But anyway, the situation was incredibly messy. There were multiple factions in the PDPA - the war started in earnest when the Soviets decided to (literally) kill off one faction in favour of the other - and that was even truer of the Mujahideen. Soviet tactics were also considerably more brutal than is sometimes remembered (i.e. a common opinion amongst ex-Mujahideen in 2001 and after was that the US/NATO were a bunch of softies in comparison) and contributed considerably to the wrecking of Afghan society and what happened as a consequence.

Of course, the Soviets killed off that faction because that faction was verging on going full Pol Pot. The Soviets really did have the best intentions, although no one realized it at the time.

[Famous Mortimer]

The PDPA under Taraki was both ruthless and stupid.


Did he think that imposing state atheism on a conservative muslim country was going to go over smoothly? Perhaps that may have worked with a western society, but Socialism, without significant modifications, was never going to work in the Muslim world regardless of how many Soviet tanks drove through Kabul.


Perhaps a flexible implementation of socialist policies and broad realization of the established ideologies of the people of Afghanistan could have avoided some of the chaos that eventually ensued? 

I don't know about Taraki's position on religion specifically but even if he did try to "impose state atheist" (which I doubt) he was in power for only like 2 years. After him, Afghan Communist leaders made no attempt to impose atheism. They mentioned God in speeches and there was religious programming on state radio.

[Famous Mortimer]

Hell, in 1987, 2 years before the Soviet withdraw, the Afghan Communists enshrined Islam as the official religion of the country.

They weren't against religion, they were against fundamentalist religion. But to most of the people in Afghanistan, there was no distinction between the two. A version of Islam where women weren't allowed to be bought and sold wasn't really Islam to them.