The history of Afghanistan cannot be fully understood without examining the wider geopolitical upheaval that began with the Iranian Revolution of February 1979 and the Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States.
The Taliban did not, however, emerge immediately after the Iranian Revolution. The movement was founded in the early 1990s, after the Soviet withdrawal and during Afghanistan’s subsequent civil war. What happened in 1979 was the creation of the geopolitical environment in which the later rise of the Taliban became possible.
In April 1978, Afghanistan’s communist People’s Democratic Party seized power. The new government faced growing resistance, while internal divisions within the communist leadership deepened. By December 1979, Moscow had lost confidence in Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin and feared that the government in Kabul could collapse. Soviet forces entered Afghanistan on December 24–25, killed Amin and installed Babrak Karmal. U.S. diplomatic records describe Moscow’s immediate objectives as preventing an insurgent victory, removing Amin and establishing a stable pro-Soviet government.
The Iranian Revolution nevertheless mattered enormously to Soviet calculations.
Iran had just experienced a dramatic Islamic revolution that overthrew the Shah and brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power. For Moscow, the possibility that revolutionary Islamic politics could influence Muslim populations within the Soviet Union—particularly in Central Asia—was a genuine strategic concern. Historical assessments of the invasion have identified the potential spread of Islamic fervour among Soviet Muslims as one of the considerations discussed at the time.
But the idea that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan solely because they were frightened by Iran is too simple. Declassified material indicates that Moscow was primarily concerned with instability in Afghanistan, the survival of its allied communist government and the security of its southern frontier. Some historians have also argued that the Soviet leadership saw Afghanistan as strategically valuable because of its proximity to Iran, Pakistan, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. The precise balance among these motives remains debated by historians.
Afghanistan was therefore much more than another Cold War battlefield. It was a strategic buffer between competing powers.
The Soviet occupation lasted nearly a decade. The war officially ended with the withdrawal of the last Soviet troops on February 15, 1989. The conflict devastated Afghanistan, producing hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees. Estimates of civilian and total Afghan deaths vary considerably depending on the period and methodology used.
The United States and its allies subsequently turned Afghanistan into one of the largest covert battlegrounds of the Cold War. Washington supplied money and weapons to Afghan resistance groups, while Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) played the central role in distributing assistance. Saudi Arabia also agreed to match American financial contributions. Declassified U.S. documents confirm that the CIA program expanded substantially after the Soviet invasion and that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were crucial partners.
This history is sometimes simplified into the claim that the CIA directly trained Osama bin Laden and created al-Qaeda. The reality was more complicated. The United States supported Afghan mujahideen through Pakistan, while Arab volunteers operated through separate networks. Bin Laden eventually became one of the most prominent figures in the foreign Arab jihadist movement.
The Soviet withdrawal did not bring peace. Afghanistan descended into civil war, and out of that chaos the Taliban emerged in the 1990s. In 1996, Taliban forces captured Kabul and eventually provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
Then came September 11, 2001.
I still remember the images broadcast around the world after the attacks. President George W. Bush was visiting a Florida elementary school when he was informed that America was under attack. The expression on his face changed as the enormity of the event became clear.
Days later, Bush stood at Ground Zero and addressed rescue workers. His words became one of the defining moments of the post-9/11 era: “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you.”
The United States subsequently demanded that the Taliban surrender al-Qaeda leaders and close terrorist training camps. When those demands were not met, Washington launched its military campaign in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. The initial targets included Taliban military capabilities and al-Qaeda facilities.
Bush famously declared that countries had to choose whether they were “with us, or with the terrorists.” The campaign quickly brought down the Taliban government, although the Taliban itself was not permanently defeated.
Afghanistan was followed by Iraq.
In 2003, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq, arguing that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and represented a threat to international security. The weapons stockpiles that had been presented as a central justification for war were never found, and the invasion triggered years of insurgency, sectarian violence and humanitarian suffering.
Saddam Hussein was eventually captured and executed.
The wider question, however, remains: what ultimately drives great-power intervention—security, ideology, strategic influence, natural resources, economic interests, or a combination of all of them?
That question is at the heart of Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. The 2004 book examines the Bush political dynasty, Watergate, Iran-Contra and the political history leading toward the Iraq era—not simply the Afghanistan and Iraq wars themselves.
The larger historical lesson is therefore more complicated than any single conspiracy or explanation.
From the Iranian Revolution to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, from the CIA-backed mujahideen struggle to the emergence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and finally to the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, one theme repeatedly appears: geopolitics, ideology, security and economic interests have often been deeply intertwined.
History rarely moves because of one motive alone. Behind the speeches about freedom, revolution, terrorism and national security are strategic calculations about territory, influence, alliances, resources and power.
And that may be the most important lesson of all: when great powers compete, ordinary people often pay the highest price.
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