The Great Unknown

Time Magazine's recent gruesome and heartbreaking cover purports to describe the kind of thing that will happen to Afghan women (and by connection, any other Afghan) if the United States pulls out of Afghanistan. The argument of course is that without the U.S. military propping up them up, the Afghan government will collapse in a matter of weeks, leaving the average citizen subject to Taliban retribution once they return to power.

I'm not so sure, nor should anyone else be. This argument has been made before. In 1988, after the Soviets signed the Geneva Accords and promised a full withdrawal from Afghanistan, nearly every Afghanistan watcher predicted that the Afghan government's collapse was inevitable. The mujahideen would topple it in weeks and sweep into power. Scholars, journalists, intelligence experts -- just about everyone, including Afghanistan's President Mohammed Najibullah -- thought the government was finished.

But it wasn't. As the Soviets were departing, the mujahideen staged the most widespread (and for the mujahideen, coordinated) offensive of the war. The situation was especially difficult in the East, but ultimately, government forces, made up of the regular army, national police forces, and militias, turned back the mujahideen offensive. The country was far from under its control, but there was no government collapse.

How did they survive? In the mid and late 1980s, the Afghan government got much more serious about providing its military and police forces with better training. The impending Soviet pullout also stiffened the backs of many, especially in the military, who realized that the Islamic fundamentalism that fired the most powerful mujahideen groups -- and the foreign fighters who made up their most committed members -- ran the risk of replacing one foreign system for another. Finally, and most importantly, the USSR gave the Afghans billions in military and economic aid. The military aid included the Soviets' most advanced armored personnel carriers, multiple rocket launch systems, and even the venerable Scud missile. For the next two years, the Afghan government and the militia allies, backed by billions of rubles in Soviet aid, fought the mujahideen to a standstill.

No, the government did not collapse, though it looked for all intents and purposes like it should have. One of the ironies of the Cold War's end is that the regime installed by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan outlasted the Soviet government itself. It was only when Gorbachev canceled Soviet aid to Afghanistan that the problems began. Najibullah's government fell in April 1992, four months after Gorbachev's did, and almost three years after the last General Boris Gromov became the last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan.

Fast forward to July 2010. Just this month, the United States and an international group of donors has pledged long-term aid to the Karzai government with the expectation that Afghanistan will be a rentier state for years to come. Military aid of course will continue.

I'm terrified for the Afghan people when we do finally leave, but the truth is that their fate is wholly unknown. For Time Magazine to make this claim ignores the lessons of history in Afghanistan itself. It's nothing more than an exercise of grandiose American hubris and a shameful manipulation of American opinion.