Learn all about the history of Afghanistan piece by piece
The motives and background to the Russian intervention are still the subject of controversial debate today.
Since Afghanistan's independence in 1919, the Soviet Union has maintained close economic and military relations with the country, which were intensified in the mid-1960s.
Researchers also discuss the influence exerted by the USA, the proximity to US ally Pakistan and the Islamic revolution in Iran that broke out shortly before the intervention as possible motives that could have made the Soviet Union fear for its influence in the region (Bpb 2014).
The number of civilian victims of this war is given in various estimates ranging from 875,000 (Khalidi 1991) to 1.5 million (Sliwinski 1989).
In addition, 75,000 to 90,000 insurgents were killed (Giustozzi 2013) and 18,000 casualties were recorded among the Afghan security forces (Isby 1986; Bell 2013).
The number of survivors who were severely and permanently physically injured amounts to almost 1.5 million (Maley 2002).
A third of all villages and two thirds of all roads were destroyed, and the land was contaminated with mines.
In total, over six million Afghans had fled the country to the West or to Pakistan and Iran (Rubin 1995).
The Soviet Union had also paid a high price for the occupation of Afghanistan:
In the course of the occupation, 620,000 soldiers were deployed in the Hindu Kush.
Over 14,000 soldiers were killed and more than 50,000 soldiers were wounded (Julian Voje 2014).
The armed anti-state opposition, also known as mujahideen groups, was supported militarily and financially by Western states and their clients - in particular the USA and Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan unilaterally promoted Islamist factions and in this way pushed secular, leftist, nationalist and monarchist resistance groups into the background.
Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops in February 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the cessation of financial aid to Kabul by Russia the following year, the Mujahideen took control of Kabul in April 1992.
Attempts by various faction leaders to monopolize power led to a civil war (Mielke 2024).
While the capital Kabul and its population were largely spared during the Soviet occupation, the civil war resulted in a high number of civilian casualties.
According to estimates, the death toll is between 60,000 and 80,000 people out of a total population of two million.
Around half a million people fled during the first year of the war in 1992.
In the years that followed, there were further waves of refugees until the fighting increasingly spread beyond the capital Kabul to the provinces in 1994 (Chiari 2020).
In response to this, the Taliban movement formed in the south of the country from 1994.
Supported by Pakistani aid, it was able to spread throughout the country and finally capture Kabul in 1996 (Mielke 2024).
According to various sources, only between 300,000 and 600,000 people lived in the city in 1996, when the Taliban took power in Kabul (Chiari 2020).
The Taliban proclaimed the establishment of an Islamic emirate.
However, the repressive measures against all individuals and groups who did not fit into the Taliban's rigid Islamist world view led to a rapid erosion of their acceptance among the population.
This resulted in foreign policy isolation, which was further exacerbated by the violation of international human rights standards (Mielke 2024).
The Afghanistan conflict was the longest war fought by the USA and NATO since the Vietnam War - it lasted even longer than the latter.
In a statement following the events of September 11, 2001 the administration of George W. Bush laid the prosecution of Al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden as one of the central goals of the so-called "War on terror" fixed.
The US government invoked the view that bin Laden was a Guest rights on Afghan territory enjoyed.
On October 7, 2001 the USA initiated an intervention against the Taliban.
Through massive Area bombing the Northern Alliance in a position to take Kabul (Mielke 2024).
The war in Afghanistan, which lasted from October 2001 to August 2021, claimed more than 240,000 fatalities.
| Category | Number of fatalities |
|---|---|
|
Afghan military and police
|
70.000 |
|
Civilians |
47.812 |
|
Humanitarian aid workers |
444 |
|
Journalists |
72 |
|
Taliban and other rebels |
120.071 |
|
American soldiers |
2.445 |
|
Other foreign soldiers |
1.145 |
|
Foreign mercenaries and security guards |
3.846 |
|
Additional US personnel |
16 |
The data for the period from October 2001 until April 2021 originate from Watson Institute of Brown University (Crawford and Lutz 2021).
The figures for the months May to August 2021 were derived from the reporting of the New York Times taken from (NYT 2024).
The information on the Taliban are based on the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP 2024).
For a more detailed analysis, please refer to the Afghanistan Index referred to (Gollob and O'Hanlon 2020).
