Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Former Soviet Union’s Invasion

It has been days that some in domestic media have held special programs about the invasion of USSR. Many Afghans clearly remember the day which wins the blame for subsequent break-out of human disaster. Perhaps, the Afghan new generation does not know much about former Soviet Union. Instead they have a grim picture about the invasion from what they have read on school syllabus, text books, newspapers and stories quoted by elders.

From very start of school, they start learning about latter "M" for Mujahideen, where the word is defined that who are Mujaheeds and what they have done against "Godless USSR".

Indeed the word Mujaheed and former Soviet Union has been used as frequent as school girls and boys think that Mujaheeds are those who did Jihad against USSR. But by the course of time, the word Mujaheed has started becoming unpopular as part of people blames them for years of disastrous civil war.

It is commonly claimed that Afghan people stood against Red Army in order to maintain the independence of the country. But seemingly it was the main reason behind spontaneous movement of civilians.

Because the sense of independence and sovereignty are linked with patriotism, and patriotism emerges generally with the dominance of social awareness, improvement of political conscience, huge urban population and many other things which are linked to modernization; while over 80 percent of Afghan citizens were living in rural areas. People had least information about power struggle and power change in the capital.

Moreover, governments during decades and centuries were not legal and did not care about common people. The linkage between people and government was feeble. There was no strong bondage between government and civilians to a level that civilians run behind the rulers to support them because governments were hunting people only when their budget boxes got empty or pressured by any foreign force.
Thus, the concept of independence and national sovereignty had least meaning for civilians.

So, the only factor that could spark people and set them against USSR was religion. It was widely circulated that Soviet Union was communist and against Islam. It attacked only trying to eliminate Islam. The deep-rooted religiosity moved civilians and they merely for God's sake held Jihad or holy war, which finally forced Red Army out of the country.